A Sea Of Red

From Chris in his LU Notebook ...

LU Notebook: Duke's cousin blocks Michigan field goal

By Chris Lang
Lynchburg News & Advance
September 5, 2007

Brandon Duke and Corey Lynch are cousins and were teammates at Evangelical High School in Fort Myers, Fla. They played in a Florida all-star game after their senior year, and members of Liberty's coaching staff were there scouting athletes.

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Just in case said reader who called and asked the question reads this forum:
The question was whether or not Liberty had the first win over a ranked I-A team, citing the Eastern Michigan game in 1989.

Yes, App State's win was indeed the first win for an FCS team over a team ranked in the AP Poll. The only other win over a ranked team came in the mid-80s when Lamar beat Baylor when Baylor was ranked No. 20 in the UPI poll.

Eastern Michigan has never been ranked in any major college football poll.

Why do all of the Liberty people swear the EMU was ranked then?

Maybe the glorious history of Eastern Michigan football makes them just assume that they must have been ranked.

I was at LU then and I definitly have the rememberance that EMU was ranked in some poll - not sure which one. I think it was somewhere between #18 and #22.

Well, I'm not recognizing any poll other than AP, USA Today or UPI. Those are the only "major" polls.

was just looking for it on their website and could not find anything. They were 5-0-1 going into the game with LU.

You are not the only one that remembers it that way. I was around then too and pretty much anyone else that was around during that time or played football remembers that they were ranked in the top 25. It is like someone erased the records or something because I couldn't find anything on the net. I did ask Todd Wetmore SID to look into it and he confirmed that Liberty did in fact beat Eastern MI but they were not ranked. I don't know where the disconnect is but ask any player that played on that team and they will tell you that Eastern was in the top 25. Any coach too for that matter.

All that I remember about Eastern Michigan that year is that they were undefeated up until that point and had votes in the poll. There was no top 25 at that time but a top 20. There was no line on that game and EMU ended up 8-3.

That would make since then Steve and based on the number of votes, folks just assumed they were in the top 25 based on the fact that they received so many votes among the people that didn't make the top 25. For example, we consider Liberty as ranked 36 right now based on the amount of top 25 votes received by teams not in the top 25.

That sounds logical, although I am not ready to give up on the idea that EMU was top 20. Im gonna continue to look for evidence.

Stevev wrote:All that I remember about Eastern Michigan that year is that they were undefeated up until that point and had votes in the poll. There was no top 25 at that time but a top 20. There was no line on that game and EMU ended up 8-3.

EMU went 7-3-1 in 1989 and according to this story - that was the year the "AP Top 25" was started
http://freepress.com/apps/pbcs.dll/arti ... 048/SPORTS

sorry, don't know how to insert a URL yet.

There's a pic in the photo collage on the App State academic site that shows the elevation the guy got to block it...pretty sick.

http://www.web.appstate.edu/victors.html

I think that picture is from the first FG that App blocked. Duke's cousin was wearing #47 and the kick hit him square in the chest.

PeterParker wrote:There's a pic in the photo collage on the App State academic site that shows the elevation the guy got to block it...pretty sick.

http://www.web.appstate.edu/victors.html

Shortcut: Pic 30 of 31

I remember all the talk about Eastern Michigan being in the top 25 poll, BUT they merely received votes in the poll. They were not actualy ranked in the top 25. Every one was talking about how liberty beat a team who got votes in the poll. Somehow that has morphed into the misconception that Liberfty beat #25 Eastern Michigan. Eastern Michigan was not actualy ranked at the time. Still, a great win, but the legend that has grown up around that win is slightly false. Ironicaly, had they beaten Liberty they would have probably moved into the rankings the next week. If you go to LU's media guide on page 164, it lists the wins for that 1989 season. Every ranked team of any division (IA, IAA, Div II, NAIA, etc) that LU has ever played has the ranking in parenthesis next to the team name. No ranking appears for Eastern Michigan.

Eastern Michigan, ranked or not ranked, that was a breakthrough win for our young 1AA program (It was our second year in 1AA and our first year of playoff eligibility). That win made me very proud and I thought that it would lead to LU being a playoff contender down the road (something that never happeded for reasons I am not going to discuss right now). I rememeber the Robbie Justino to Eric Green pass that put us ahead with seconds remaining to pull off the biggest upset in LU football history. The week before we had beaten #13 Eastern Illinois behing Robbie Justino who replaced Paul Johnson when he got hurt and lead us to a game winning field goal. In my opinion that was LU's best team ever but unfortunately we never developed into the 1AA power that everyone expected. I hope that I am not off topic but just wanted to share a "blast from the past" in LU football history.