Georgia Southern vs Montana 1989 1 AA semifinals Dec 09

In Erk Russell's next-to-last game before retiring, on their way to a perfect season, Georgia Southern plays a tough Montana team headed by QB Grady Bennett. This game was not broadcast in Georgia, but there was a TV van from Montana at the game. I wrote to the station and asked if they would be willing to supply a rabid fan with a tape of the game. A few days later a VHS tape arrived in the mail. So this was an act of extraordinary generosity.

Unfortunately the tape must have passed near a magnetic field on the way to Statesboro. It was very hard to read on any VCR, and I tried half a dozen. It looks like it was dubbed from a tape recorded on Ep (low quality setting for VCRs, necessary to capture a whole game on one tape). The image is quite fuzzy. Make your viewing window the size of a smallish 1980s color TV, for a reasonable image.

The version here is the best I was able to obtain after spending hours re-syncing audio and cutting out tracking glitches, and it is still far from perfect, especially during a ten minute stretch from 38 to 48 minutes in...but it is watchable and you can follow the action, which shows an extraordinary performance by Georgia Southern's junior QB Raymond Gross.

The Montana announcers, Dave Tester and Bob Hermes, were generous to Georgia Southern. They raved about Raymond Gross and his mastery of the option game. They were sad when Raymond threw a Hail Mary just before halftime and it bounced off the Montana defender into the arms of Donnie Allen, a Georgia Southern receiver. "Somebody upstairs wants this team to win this game, Dave." That's around 1:08 in. Another funny remark: "The friendlies here in the Deep South are lovin' this one." They also expressed some disillusionment about coming from Montana to the south expecting sunny warm southern weather, finding a cold rainy day instead.

Great plays are made by: Raymond Gross, Giff Smith, Pat Parr, Paul Sikkelee, Darrell Hendrix, Donnie Allen, Randell Boone, Taz Dixon, Lester Efford, Terry Harvin, Ernest Thompson, Albert Huntley, Mike Dowis. The late GSU Comm Arts faculty member Kent Murray gets a nod for his help around 1:55.