Best Moments in Big Ten Football History #10: Air Superiority, 1980

FanHouse is counting down the 10 best, 10 worst, and 10 weirdest moments in Big Ten football history.

The phrase "three yards and a cloud of dust" was coined to describe Big Ten football, and it's still a fairly apt description of the conference's beefy, run-first mentality. That is not to say, however, that the forward pass is still a novelty in the Big Ten. Indeed, some pretty good quarterbacks have come out of the conference. A guy in New England comes to mind, for instance.

There was one particular day, though, when everything truly went berserk. That day was November 8, 1980. On that Saturday afternoon, the Big Ten's record for the most passing yards in a single game was broken not once but twice. In fact, not only was the conference's single-game passing record broken, so was the NCAA's. Even more improbably, two other national passing records were broken that day, though not by Big Ten quarterbacks.

Was there something in the air that day? Well, duh. Footballs were in the air. Everywhere.

The story of the Big Ten's pass-wackiest day ever begins in West Lafayette, where the Purdue Boilermakers ground the Iowa Hawkeyes into McNuggets, 58-13. Purdue's signal-caller, Mark Herrmann, was brilliant, passing for 423 yards in the victory.

Now, 423 yards is a good day for any quarterback. Even today just about any team would take that performance, especially in a 45-point victory. And Herrmann did break the old Big Ten single-game passing record. Had anybody been watching SportsCenter back in 1980 (okay, I was watching), Herrmann's great day might well have been the biggest story of the day. But you should've seen what happened in Columbus that same afternoon.

The Buckeyes were hosting Illinois that day in a true defensive slugfest. OSU wound up winning 49-42, but their victory was not the real story of the game. Even in defeat, it was hard to ignore what Illini quarterback Dave Wilson did. After the Illini struggled through the first half, trailing 28-7, Wilson picked apart Ohio State's secondary like a Rottweiler chewing on a t-bone. He wound up throwing for six touchdowns and an almost impossible to imagine 621 yards in the Illini's furious rally.

Wilson's great day obviously set a conference single-game record, but also broke the NCAA record for the most passing yards in a game. Wilson's record would stand for another eight seasons, and still stands as the sixth best game of all time.

But there were other great things happening that day as well. In Washington, Tom Flick completed more than 94% of his passes (16 out of 17) in a 45-22 win over Arizona. Even that, though, wasn't the most amazing passing story of the day. For that you had to drive down I-5 to Portland, where Neil Lomax had a pretty good day. His Portland State Vikings were playing the Delaware State Hornets, or at least playing with them. PSU wound up winning 105-0. Lomax threw for eight touchdowns, which is freakish. Even more amazing is that he threw seven of those touchdowns in the first quarter.

Lomax's great day got all the attention in the press. Let's face it; it's hard to ignore a 105-0 football game. But we may never again see a day when two passers in the same conference break the single-game yardage record. November 8, 1980 was a great day for football fans (like me) who can watch a wide-open passing attack all afternoon long.