Five days after my eighth birthday, my father woke me up with great news. He told me he had gotten tickets from a church member for the LSU-Auburn game (My father is a preacher, and people love giving preachers gifts).
I was so excited. Although I was only eight years old, I knew the Tigers were 2-2 and already had one loss in Southeastern Conference play while then-No. 4 Auburn was 4-0 and undefeated in the SEC. In my little Gifted and Talented school here in Baton Rouge, everybody knew that.
I hopped out of bed and immediately put on my Eddie Fuller jersey. The jersey had no number or no name on it, and during the previous season it was my Wendell Davis jersey. But in 1988, it was my Eddie Fuller jersey, and you better not have told me any different.
I went outside to play football – by myself of course – acting as if I were throwing myself a game-winning touchdown. I may have scored as many as 50, and LSU always won.
Later that day, we drove to LSU’s campus for a little tailgating action with my father’s best friend, joined by my aunts, uncles and cousins.
The details of the game are a bit fuzzy to me, but the final two minutes I remember as if it were, well, as if it were a long time ago.
What I do remember is that Auburn was up 6-0, and LSU could not do anything on offense. But the final drive was a different story.
The only thing I remember about that last drive was the many times I read on the scoreboard, “Incomplete. Intended for Fuller.”
It seemed as if I read that on every play, but it was only twice.
With the Tigers having a first-and-10 from the 11-yard line, the tension in Tiger Stadium was suffocating the 79,341 fans in attendance.
*First-and-10 – Tommy Hodson threw a pass to Eddie Fuller in the back of the end zone. Fuller caught it, but he was ruled out of bounds.
*Second-and-10 – INCOMPLETE
*Third-and-10 – INCOMPLETE
*Fourth-and-10 – Hodson threw the same pass to Fuller in the back of the end zone. This time, my second grade hero caught it in the back of the end zone for a touchdown with 1:41 left on the clock.
I looked around from our seats on the 50-yard line, gazing about at the crazy people surrounding me. They were acting weird.
I didn’t know how to act, so I began searching for No. 33, Eddie Fuller, to determine how I should act. But I couldn’t find him. He was lost beneath an enormous pile of LSU players, celebrating.
When All-American kicker David Browndyke capitalized the score with the extra point and LSU went on top 7-6, the crazy people surrounding me continued with their strange actions.
It wasn’t for quite some time after the event did I realize the significance of that game.
Because of that win, LSU ended up tying Auburn for the 1988 SEC Championship, and the effects of the post-touchdown celebration – registering as an earthquake on a local seismograph – placed Tiger Stadium in a class all by itself.
The game has been nicknamed “The Earthquake Game” and “The Night the Tigers Moved the Earth.”
The vibrations from the “crazy people’s” celebration registered on the seismograph in LSU’s geology department in the Howe-Russell Geoscience Complex.
Rumors suggest the noise from the fans’ celebration caused the small tremor, but experts believe it was the ground shaking.
Seismographs measure ground shaking. The only way a seismograph could measure noise is if the noise actually caused the ground to shake, which happens during a sonic boom. So unless the fans were loud enough to cause a sonic boom, it was the jumping of the 79,341 fans.
The seismograph also showed that the tremor lasted for about 15 to 20 minutes. So as I stared around me, I actually was witnessing LSU fans creating vibrations in the earth for 15 to 20 minutes. It’s no wonder they left such a lasting impression in my mind.
When we walked back to the car late that evening, my cousins and I had huge smiles on our faces. We began re-enacting the play with a crumpled up Coke can we found on the ground.
I remember one of them telling me, “I am going to have good dreams tonight.” And being the little smart ass that I was, I responded, “I won’t. I see games like this all the time.”
The truth is, I had never seen a game like that before, and I haven’t witnessed anything like it since.
When we got home late that night, I hopped in bed – still wearing my Eddie Fuller jersey – and told my dad that I would never forget there was 1:41 left on the clock when Fuller caught the pass. And I actually thought he caught it because I had accomplished the same feat so many times earlier that afternoon.
This is the 15th anniversary of that game. Just like in 1988, this game will be nationally televised on ESPN. Just like that game, the kickoff will begin after dark. Just like that game, Auburn is undefeated in SEC play while LSU has one loss.
Regardless of the parallels, this is LSU and Auburn. It doesn’t matter who should win or who is hot. In this rivalry, all that is thrown out the window. Anything can happen. Even the unthinkable.