Ronnie McAda remembers hearing Notre Dame coach Lou Holtz’s pregame speech through the walls of Giants Stadium.
The team locker rooms were so close that Army players could listen to Holtz’s every word before their 1995 game against the Irish.
“We are going to go out there and end this quickly,” said Holtz, paraphrasing. “They don’t deserve to be on the same field as we do. We have a much better team than they do.”
Little did Holtz know that his team was in for a 60-minute fight. McAda’s touchdown pass to Leon Gant closed Notre Dame’s lead to 28-27 with 39 seconds left. It was the last season college football didn’t have overtime.
“It was either go for the tie or go for the win,” said McAda, whose team was a three-touchdown underdog. “When coach (Bob) Sutton pulled us over and asked us what we wanted to do, there was no question, ‘Let’s go for the win,’ we said.”
McAda completed his two-point pass to tight end Ron Leshinski, who was tackled inches from the goal line by Notre Dame’s Ivory Covington.
“It’s good memory and it’s also a bad memory,” McAda said of the game. “It was a great game but we just didn’t close it out in the end.
“That was the defensive play of the year (Covington’s tackle). If we would have beaten Notre Dame, they would have not gone to a BCS bowl and they would have lost out on $8-10 million. It was a big deal Ivory Covington making that play against Leshinski.
“Leshinski hates to talk about it, which I totally understand. He was supposed to be in the end zone and he got hit totally across the face and got disoriented. When he turned, he said, ‘I thought I was late getting out there and by the time I turned and caught the ball, I thought I was already in the end zone and I was not.’ Little things like that changed that whole team period for us. We beat Notre Dame at that time, that’s a huge, huge win in Army history.”
This year’s undefeated Army team gets its shot Saturday to beat Notre Dame and continue its historical season. And, McAda will be watching along hoping the Black Knights can pull off the upset.
