Memorable Moments: Sticking it to the Cowboys

The first thing Jeff Harper's father asked his son after the game was how many tackles he finished with on the afternoon.

It was a legitimate question.

From the very first play of the game on a chilly Sept. 11, 1982, the public address announcer had a one-track mind, it seemed. Even in the final series of a 9-3 Border War victory for the Rams, Harper was still active.

Tackle by Jeff Harper. Harper on the tackle. Tackle by Jeff Harper.

The field at Hughes Stadium was a mess. It has snowed pretty good the night before, making it wet. As the players trampled through it more and more, it became muddy. And with Wyoming running the wish bone at the time, it was a middle linebacker's dream.

Beyond, actually.

"A good game for me was to be around nine or 10 tackles," Harper said. "That was a terrific day. I had absolutely no idea."

So, how many tackles did he have? Everybody wanted to know.

At some point after the game, CSU sports information director Gary Ozzello finally provided the answer.

Thirty-two stops. Yes, 32. In one afternoon.

Now, these were the days when SIDs didn't have records at their fingertips. Five years into his post, Ozzello was still building up the record book. He wasn't sitting behind a computer, with all of those records at the ready. No, they were tucked away in his office back at the McGraw Center, and he and his staff spent the evening combing through past summaries until they found what they figured.

Harper had set the school record for a single game. And when Harper was getting treatment the Sunday morning, Ozzello welcomed him to the record book.

"It seemed like he was making every tackle on every play," Ozzello said. "He was absolutely making every tackle. It was like unbelievable. I mean, 32 tackles."

Harper needed treatment. He remembers being sore after the game, and crawling out of bed the next morning he felt the effects of his work. He recorded 14 assisted tackles, adding 18 more assists. He even broke up a pass attempt.

Wyoming ran 80 plays overall, with Harper in on 40 percent of tackles that afternoon. He didn't just beat the record, he buried it in the ground. Kevin McLain had 23 stops seven years prior, and the closest any Ram has come since was the 27 tackles by Erich Tippeconnic at Arkansas in 1990.

"I knew I had a lot of tackles," Harper said. "The big picture didn't really settle in. When I looked at the stat sheets when Gary Ozzello passed them out and I saw I had 32 tackles, it kind of hit me then. I think I had a few more aches and pains, and it was harder getting out of bed the next morning.

"It was kinda surreal. I had no idea I had that many tackles."

Ozzello's work wasn't done. There was no email, and when it became clear Harper's day was rather outstanding, he hit the phones. He called the Associate Press. He called Sports Illustrated and every other major media outlet.

"I researched that until about 9 p.m. that night. That's when we made calls to the national media, that he had 32 tackles, a school record. We would get calls back, 'that was 32 tackles? Yes, we're sure it's 32 tackles.' Back in that day, it was manual statistics, and we had a stat crew who had been doing it – faculty and staff guys – and they were absolutely meticulous."

The result: Harper was named national player of the week by the AP and SI.

Harper finished the season with 160 tackles, which at the time sat fourth best; he now sits fifth. That season did help him set another school record, finishing his career a year later with 423. He now sits second, having been passed by Willie Taylor's 433 from 1995-98.

The 1982 season was the first for head coach Leon Fuller, who was familiar with the Wyoming staff and the wishbone they ran. His defensive hires were in tune with the offense, having faced it in their days in the old Southwest Conference.

Harper knew they had a good plan in place. As the middle linebacker, he was going to be keyed in on stopping the fullback, the first rule taught stopping the wishbone or any option attack. He figured he'd be busy. He just didn't have a clue it would be a record-setting day.

What helped, he admitted, was the field. As soggy as it was, the attack pretty much stayed between the tackles in a low-scoring affair. With the big guys up front keeping him free of blocker, Harper roamed the turf at will.

"We had a really nasty snowstorm the day before the game, so the field was kind of muddy and wet; it wasn't real good ground fitting," Harper said. "I had two or three studs playing the defensive tackles in front of me – Stan Hornung, Andy Poremba and a young Terry Unrein – so we had a really good game plan. We had a great game plan, and we had those defensive tackles lined up in three technique and they were kind of taking everything. I basically became a free hitter at that point.

"Their game plan was to hand off the fullback quite bit, and my job was to smack him every time he touched the ball."

What made it all the better was it was Wyoming. Back then, there was no Colorado rivalry. The Buffaloes would appear on the schedule in 1983, marking an end of a 25-year passage in time between the two Front Range schools playing.

Those emotions only built through his career, as past players came back to talk of the glories of victories. The stories only became better over time. And they never leave you.

Not even when the playing days end Harper started a gardening business down in Arizona.

"That was the best part of it," Harper said. "From the day we showed up on campus, it was ingrained into us from Sark Arslanian that Wyoming was the game. All I heard was stories about the great coin toss when both teams got into a brawl, and Sark pulled the team in one time on the student section and they ran down to the stadium through the student section. That's all we ever heard and what we talked about. That was the game.

"To this day, I still have a hatred for Wyoming. I had a retail nursery garden center, and quite a few Wyoming people would winter down in Scottsdale, Ariz. Tom Ehlers would send me a stack full of CSU stickers, and whenever I'd walk into the parking lot, whether I was carrying a bag of mulch or manure for a customer or a plant, I'd scan the parking lot and whenever I would see a Wyoming license plate, I'd go and put a CSU sticker on every one of them. That's a true story."

Having spent an entire afternoon sticking it to Cowboys, the old habit was hard to break.

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