Fight to the Very End

Fight to the very end.

Northwestern travels to Oxford, Ohio, to play Miami University in a season-opening game tonight at 7:30 Eastern. This game was supposed to be a homecoming forRandy Walker.

Instead, it will turn into a memorial for RandyWalker.

The earliest I can remember Randy Walker was when he was a running back for Miami in the 1970s.

But one of my most vivid memories was a quote about Walker in one of the Cincinnati papers after he was drafted by the Cincinnati Bengals in 1977. He was picked No. 371 overall in round 13. In training camp that year (they lasted a whole lot longer then), the running backs coach for the Bengals, I believe, commented on how Walker filled notebook after notebook with info.

They were commenting that even then, he knew that he wanted to be a coach.

Walker took over the program at Miami from Tim Rose, a handsome young man who was not a great football coach. The RedHawks (or whatever they were called) were 0-10-1 and 2-8-1 in the two years before Walker took over.

When Walk took the program over, he brought back sometoughness to the team.

In 1995, he brought the RedHawks to Dyche Stadium to face Gary Barnett's Northwestern team that had just beaten Notre Dame at Notre Dame. The Hawks had a pretty good QB in Neil Dougherty. The Wildcats were in control of the game, leading 28-7 in the third quarter. But Dougherty brought them back, scored some easy TDs. And then Northwestern had two fumbled snaps from their backup long snapper to lose to Miami, 30-28.

After that game, Gary Barnett was distraught, and really didn't give Miami any credit. But Walker was having none of it. He was calm, and he said the right thing, that his team just kept fighting.

I remember when Walker was coaching the Northwestern 11 years later and they beat Michigan State in a great game in Dyche Stadium, in 2001. Charles Rogers returned a punt for a TD in the fourth quarter to put State up 20-17. Northwestern had a long drive and scored a TD with only 29 seconds left to go in the game, to go up 24-20.

Northwestern kicked off, and Herb Haygood of Michigan State returned the kick 84 yards for a TD, with only 18 seconds left to go in the game. The Spartans were up 26-24.

But Northwestern wasn't done. They got a paw on the point after, making it go wide. Michigan State only had a two-point lead. They kicked off, and Zak Kustok of Northwestern had the ball on his own 15. Game over?

Kustok threw a huge pass that was almost intercepted but was in fact completed, in State territory. Nortwestern sent in a kicker, with almost no time left, and he got it through. The Cats won the game, 27-26.

And all the years that I watched Miami football, then Northwestern football, that is the one thing that really is foremost in my memory. Any Randy Walker team would keep fighting. Fight to the very end.

http://nusports.cstv.com/sports/m-footbl/mtt/walker_randy00.html

http://news.cincinnati.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060831/SPT0103/608310391/-1/CINCI