Boom! Boom! Looking back at Mizzou's most famous fake
The streak had reached 24 games, and after a first-half glimmer of hope on a soggy Saturday night at Faurot Field, all indications were that the 10th-ranked Nebraska Cornhuskers and their legion of fans were going to saunter back to Lincoln with their 25th consecutive victory over the Missouri Tigers.
Missouri had taken a lead into halftime, but Nebraska had seized the momentum with a pair of third-quarter touchdowns, jumping to a 24-14 lead. Even the most sunshine-pumping Mizzou fan couldn’t have been blamed for thinking, Not again. The Tigers had made their share of plays during the first 45 minutes. The Cornhuskers had just made more.
But then, as he so often did, sophomore quarterback Brad Smith produced a scintillating run, a 39-yard dash down the left sideline on the first play of the fourth quarter, his feet splashing on the artificial turf as he left the Blackshirts in his wake. Suddenly it was 24-21, and when James Kinney strip-sacked Jammal Lord three plays later and Dedrick Harrington picked up the wet ball and returned it 18 yards., Mizzou was in business. The Tigers were nine yards from taking the lead, or at least a chip-shot field goal from knotting it up. After they went backward on the next three snaps, senior kicker Mike Matheny was summoned. As he buckled his chinstrap, the holder, backup quarterback Sonny Riccio, heard four simple words:
“Blue on the Line.”
What was Santino Riccio even doing here? How had he landed in Columbia? A gunslinger from the western Pennsylvania town of Ellwood City, Ricco was being recruited primarily by MAC schools as a high school senior in 2000. Stop us if you’ve heard this one before: Upon taking the Missouri job in late November of that year, Gary Pinkel invited an unheralded quarterback he had been recruiting to Toledo to follow him to his new destination. Yes, Smith was that guy, but Pinkel was also after Riccio, who grew up 10 miles south of Beaver Falls, Pa., the hometown of Joe Namath. Naturally, the youngster was nothing short of ecstatic.
“As a high school kid and a younger kid growing up playing football, you want to go to the highest level you can,” Riccio says. “You see the guys playing on TV every Saturday. You see the Nebraskas having success, the Texases and Oklahomas. That’s your dream.”
Though Smith had starred just across the border in Youngstown, Ohio, a mere 36 miles from Ellwood City, he and Riccio didn’t know one another. Both players redshirted as freshmen, and Smith won the starting job for the 2002 season opener, against defending Big Ten champion Illinois. Then, quite simply, Smith went off. He would start all 48 games over the next four years, setting record after record with one dazzling play after another.
Ever the good teammate, Riccio bided his time, helping however he could, preparing and practicing as if he were the starter, knowing he was always one play from getting on the field. And in the second week of the 2003 season, in the second half of a game against Ball State in Muncie, Ind., that opportunity came. Smith had been dinged by a mild concussion, and in the locker room at halftime, Riccio was told he would be taking snaps in the second half. He remembers gathering his teammates and saying, “I want to score a touchdown on the first drive.”
He was pumped. Of course, he was. Smith had gotten his shot. Now it was Riccio’s turn to show he was cut out to play major college football. A large contingent of family and friends had made the trek from Ellwood City. He could see the excitement in his teammates’ eyes as well.
“They knew I had put in a lot of work,” says Riccio. “They saw the behind-the-scenes kind of things. It was what you want from your teammates. They knew I was a leader, but I wasn’t the face of the program, as Brad was.”
The first possession of the second half ended abruptly, with a couple of incomplete passes and a three-and-out, but when he stepped on the field again, Riccio delivered: a crisp 14-play, 80-yard drive that culminated in a touchdown pass that put the Tigers up 21 points. They coasted to a 35–7 victory. Riccio finished a steady 7-of-12 for 59 yards and led two scoring drives. The TD pass came on a 14-yard strike to junior tight end Victor Sesay.
“Vic, Vic, my man,” Riccio says when reminded who was on the receiving end of his first touchdown pass.
What was Victor Sesay doing here? How had he landed in Columbia? A star receiver out of Washington, D.C., Sesay received a handful of Division I offers. But grades were an issue, and while his SAT score was respectable, it wasn’t good enough to rescue him. No surprise, he became a hot commodity on the junior college market, and in a bold move, he settled on Ventura (Calif.) College. He had never ventured farther away from home than Florida (for a basketball tournament), but Ventura was attracting a lot of players from the East Coast. The homegrown talent was salty as well. “I went there for the competition,” Sesay says.
He starred on the field, and as he got his grades in order, the big schools came calling: USC, Nebraska, Tennessee. Many believed he would become a Trojan. The USC campus was 90 minutes away, and Sesay had become friendly with a bunch of the players. But as so often happens in recruiting, one coach talked to another, and the wheels starting turning.
Dave Steckel, the Missouri linebackers coach in 2002, was scouting a player down the road at Mt. San Jacinto when a coach there suggested he check out Sesay. Mount Jac had just played Ventura, and the coach had come away impressed with Sesay. Long story short: Steckel made the trip to Ventura to see Sesay and reported back to the offensive staff at Missouri. And so began the Tigers’ recruitment of a juco tight end.
Sesay didn’t know much about Missouri, but his intrigue about the possibility of playing with Smith got him on campus. The deal was essentially sealed on his official visit, when Sesay sat down with Cliff Young and Terrence Curry, a pair of rising seniors. They broke everything down for him. The playbook was eerily similar to the one Sesay had used in high school. He bonded with Justin Gage and Antwaun Bynum. Everyone made him feel welcome, as if he was part of a family.
But if California was a culture shock, how would Sesay adjust to life in America’s heartland?
“I felt like this was coming home, regardless of where it was,” he says. “If Missouri would have been in Maine — that system and that group of guys, they were similar to how I grew up. Just hearing them and the changes Coach Pinkel was talking about. It was fairly new to them too.”
On the night before signing day, Sesay called Steckel to say he was coming to Columbia. Steckel didn’t want to believe him, but Sesay replied, “Hey, I gave you my word.”
It didn’t hurt that Sesay had received an email from Smith. The contents featured a picture of Smith throwing to, well, no one. Four words accompanied the image: Waiting on you, Dog.
The Nebraska game fell at a perfect time on the schedule. The Tigers were coming off a bye week, and a stinging defeat to their bitter rival. After wins in their first four games, they had laid an egg against Kansas in Lawrence, losing 35-14. The week off gave the players and the coaching staff a chance to regroup. They had long ago circled Oct. 11 on the calendar. Nobody had to be reminded about the 24-game losing streak or the manner in which the Cornhuskers had inflicted beat-down after beat-down. The kids from Ellwood City and Washington, D.C. had been well-briefed on the magnitude of the game as well.
Riccio remembers standing on the sideline at Faurot as a true freshman in 2001 and watching quarterback Eric Crouch weave his way through the Missouri defense for a touchdown, even after retreating into his own end zone. “We had him for a safety,” Riccio says of what officially went down as a 95-yard score, a highlight-reel run that stamped Crouch’s Heisman candidacy. “I said, ‘Wow, how do you beat that?’ ”
That was the problem: Missouri couldn’t beat Nebraska. Sesay had gotten a taste of the so-called rivalry during recruiting. One Nebraska coach in particular wanted to make sure the tight end understood who the big kid on the Big 12 block was.
“He let me know how much they had beaten the brains out of Missouri, how they look at Missouri, how they feel about Missouri,” Sesay recalls. “I’m definitely seeing the wolf behind the sheep. So, yeah, I was aware. I understood the hatred from these guys’ mouths. They were looking at us like they could just run over us.”
The Tigers were understandably ready to pull out all of the stops, and they made good use of the extra week of prep time.
“I remember I told Sonny that we’d been going over all these fake field goals and punts and onside kicks and reverses — these really trick plays,” says Sesay. “This was the point in practice where you had to pay attention. They had installed about four or five new fakes.”
One of those trick plays against Nebraska came in the form of a double pass, Smith throwing to wideout Darius Outlaw, who then heaved the ball back across the field to Smith. A convoy of blockers had formed a wall along the east sideline, and Smith glided to a 47-yard touchdown, capping a 95-yard drive. Four minutes into the second quarter, Missouri led for the first time, 14-7.
“We knew they had some weak links,” Riccio says. “We knew offensively we could make some plays with what we had installed.”
But nobody would have dared predict the Tigers would have the audacity to call the play they did early in the fourth quarter.
They had worked on the fake field goal for the better part of two weeks, but the decision to call the trickeration was made in a matter of seconds. That’s how football is often played. It’s a game of momentum, and after the strip-sack and fumble return, the Tigers had all of it. Time for the kill shot.
The offense hadn’t even made its way onto the field when Bruce Walker, Mizzou’s assistant line and special teams coach, suggested to offensive coordinator Dave Christensen that the Tigers dial up the fake if they didn’t punch the ball in the end zone. Pinkel liked the idea. But the timing and the ball placement had to be perfect. First, the staff had already decided the line of scrimmage had to be inside the 20. Also, they wanted the ball spotted on the right hash.
Zach Abron ran for a yard on first down, Smith lost the yard back on the next snap and then was sacked for a five-yard loss. It was fourth down now. The ball was sitting inside the 20, at the 14. It was also on the right hash.
Riccio was busy charting plays but he had also heard the buzz. “So here it comes,” he recalls. “I’m like, ‘He’s going to call this. He doesn’t have the … He’s not going to call that play right now.’ ”
And then Pinkel did.
There would be two receivers on the route. Sesay was lined up on the left side of the formation. His assignment was to run a deep corner, to the back corner of the end zone. Junior tight end Clint Matthews was to the right and would flare into the flat. Walker had also drilled into Riccio that he shouldn’t be afraid to tuck it and run.
“Coach Walker was my guy,” Riccio says. “He recruited me. The guys who recruit you want you to play. They want their guys to succeed.”
One problem with the notion of scrambling: The Tigers were in a goal-to-go situation, which meant it was touchdown or bust. And considering where he caught the snap, Riccio would’ve had to run more than 20 yards, to the short side of the field, to boot.
Zach Strom delivered a perfect snap, Matheny sold the field goal by following through with his kick, and Riccio spun out to his right. As he surveyed the field, the situation was anything but ideal.
“I look up and all I see are white jerseys and white helmets with red on them. I’m like, ‘I’ve got to make a play.’ I look at Clint. He’s covered.”
Sesay was excitedly working his way across the field. He was even with a safety before the defender realized what was happening. One thought was going through his head: Throw it right now, Sonny!
Riccio scanned the field and was relieved to see the extended left arm of his 6-foot-5 tight end. Now came the hard part. Two Nebraska defenders were in scramble mode, but they had recovered rather nicely to get into position to make a play. Riccio had to deliver a perfect pass.
“As soon as it left my hand, I knew it was a good throw,” he says. “It dropped in. It’s just one of those feelings. When the ball leaves your hand, you know.”
Wet ball and all? “I had no feeling,” he says. “It was just something we practiced. My number was called. I had to go make a play.”
Sesay’s work was just beginning. He had a pass to catch, and he was running out of real estate. “I told Sonny that the way he threw it was like a postcard,” he says. “He couldn’t have put the ball in a more perfect spot. I just had to reach up and catch it.”
He also had to get a foot down in-bounds.
“There was a point I thought I was going to slip and the ball was going to fall out of bounds,” he said. “It wasn’t a difficult catch, definitely one I think I could make again in a second. But I had to turn in a way where my feet didn’t go out of bounds.”
Sesay caught ball without so much as a bobble, got both feet down and skidded out of the back corner of the end zone.
“Se-Say! Se-Say!” John Kadlec shouted on the Mizzou radio network. “Boom! Boom!”
Mizzou would score the last 27 points — all in the fourth quarter — in a 41-24 victory. The streak was over. Students stormed the field. Cell phone lines in and around Faurot Field jammed. Grown men cried.
“You’ve got to give credit to Coach Pinkel and the staff,” Riccio says. “They saw something, and it worked. Coach Pinkel had the balls to call that play. That’s a gutsy call.”
Says Sesay, “We had just defeated Goliath.”
The season ended with a loss to Arkansas in the Independence Bowl, and for Riccio, the writing was on the wall. This was clearly Smith’s offense and Smith’s team. Riccio considered sticking around if he could also play baseball, but football was his first love. He wanted to play, and he wanted to be closer to home. He left the program on good terms, transferring to Division I-AA Delaware and playing two more seasons. His career stat line at Mizzou read 13 completions in 22 attempts for 134 yards with one interception and a pair of 14-yard touchdown passes, both to one Victor Sesay.
Sesay returned for his senior season and would finish his career with 46 receptions for 468 yards and five touchdowns. He was the 16th-rated tight end in the 2005 NFL Draft, and although he got a couple of free-agent looks, nothing materialized.
Today he is back home in Washington, D.C., running a business with his older brother, Lennon Khalil, in which they bid on properties through Fannie Mae . A couple of times a month, he watches the highlight video from the Nebraska game “just to remember that moment. It was a moment in history, and I was glad to be a part of it. I’m happy to be a Tiger.”
Riccio is back home too, settled in Ellwood City with his wife, Natalie, and the couple’s two young children, Vinny and Vida. Sonny and his older brother, Antonio, have taken over the management of their father’s Italian restaurant.
Sonny has also watched the play too many times to count. It’s often done after some prodding from Vinny Riccio, ever the proud father, who when entertaining friends has been known to turn to his son and say, “Sonny, show them that play on YouTube.”
Blue on the Line. The play that toppled the Big Red for the first time in a quarter century.