Mark Montieth: Date with destiny

The fates of three football players collided with the shock and force of a thunderbolt the afternoon of Sept. 24, 1977, when Purdue and Notre Dame met at Ross-Ade Stadium.

One wound up in the hospital, his football career over.

Another wound up in the Pro Football Hall of Fame but paid for his admission with debilitating injuries.

And the third, the unintentional instigator, wound up living a pleasant, productive life outside of football.

Purdue and Notre Dame will meet on a football field for the 126th time on Sept. 14, and while every sporting event presents the possibility of a life-changing experience, it’s unlikely anything as momentous as what happened 47 years ago will occur.

That day, a player nearly was killed on the field, which in turn revived the career of a teammate. Had it not happened the way it did, at least a few lives might be notably different today. Destiny had more than one date that day.

Hit hard

Notre Dame was a heavy favorite. It had lost just three games each of the past two seasons under coach Dan Devine, but the alums—accustomed to the success and charisma of predecessor Ara Parseghian—were grumbling. When the Irish lost their second game of the season at Mississippi, “Dump Devine” stickers began popping up on car bumpers around South Bend.

A loss at Purdue in the third week would have marked the beginning of the end of Devine’s tenure. And it nearly happened. The Boilermakers, led by first-year coach Jim Young and freshman quarterback Mark Herrmann, were coming off a 5-6 season and in the early stages of a major rebuild, but they jumped to a 24-14 first-half lead that stunned the largest crowd (68,966) in Ross-Ade history to that date.

Devine pulled starting quarterback Rusty Lisch late in the first quarter in favor of Gary Forystek, a senior. Forystek, a high school all-American from Dearborn, Michigan, who had chosen Notre Dame over a long list of major programs, including Michigan, completed two of his first three passes to move the Irish to Purdue’s 26-yard line. But then, flushed from the pocket and forced to run, he collided head-on with Purdue’s senior linebacker, Fred Arrington.

The explosive impact reverberated through the stadium, stunning the fans into silence. By today’s rules, Arrington would have been penalized, perhaps ejected, for headhunting. Forystek lay motionless for 25 heart-stopping minutes, and an ambulance was called onto the field. Many of those in attendance feared the worst, including Alan Karpick, who is now the publisher of a Purdue fan publication, Gold and Black Illustrated.

“That was the hardest hit I’ve ever seen. Ever. Still,” Karpick recalls. “I thought Forystek was dead. I’m not kidding.”

Young, now 89 and living in Tucson, Arizona, shared that fear.

“It was one of the, if not the, hardest hits I ever witnessed,” says Young, who served as an assistant or head college coach every season but two from 1957 to 1994.

Adds Arrington: “I thought I had killed the guy. They put ammonia salt under his nose, and he wouldn’t move.”

Forystek, however, is quick to remind that he was making a mutual effort. His nickname among teammates was “Grater” because he ran like a road grater, moving obstacles out of the way.

“I was trying to run him over, and he was trying to kill me,” he says. “It was one-on-one.”

Forystek was taken to St. Elizabeth Hospital in Lafayette with a fractured collarbone and broken vertebrae near the base of his neck but was listed in stable condition. Word of that got back to both teams before the game ended, relieving everyone. Forystek recalls that he remained in the hospital for four days.

Devine sent Lisch back into the game for the rest of the half and the start of the third quarter, but with Notre Dame still trailing by 10 points late in the period, he grew desperate. He finally called for his third-string quarterback—a junior named Joe Montana.

Montana nearly threw an interception on his first pass but proceeded to lead the Irish to a 31-24 victory. Devine said afterward he wasn’t sure who would start the next game but stuck with Montana. Notre Dame won every game the rest of the season, including a victory in the Cotton Bowl for the national championship.

Purdue, failing to capture what could have been a season-propelling victory, stumbled to a 5-6 record.

Diverging paths

Arrington, Forystek and Montana have traveled wildly divergent paths since that afternoon in Ross-Ade, but each has done well.

Montana, of course, went on to play 16 NFL seasons and lead San Francisco to four Super Bowl titles. He was voted the league’s Most Valuable Player twice, was an obvious Hall of Fame selection in 2000 and is widely regarded as one of the greatest quarterbacks in history. His reputation is built on his clutch performances, such as the one he displayed in the comeback at Purdue. He earned the nickname “Joe Cool.”

But he has paid dearly for all the glory. He was removed from the field by ambulance once, too, in a playoff game against Buffalo in 1993, and has had more than two dozen surgeries since retiring in 1994.

Forystek never played in another game. He spent the rest of the season recovering from his injuries, although he was cleared to play in the Cotton Bowl if needed. His college career consisted of seven completed passes, most of those coming in a mop-up role. Declaring “I’ve never had the opportunity to prove myself,” he took Chicago’s offer of a free agent tryout in 1978 but was cut in August. He had another tryout with San Francisco the following year and was being tutored by assistant coach Sam Wyche but suffered a torn rotator cuff and retired in July.

There probably wasn’t much future in it, anyway. Montana had just arrived as a rookie.

“It was one thing after another,” he says now. “It just wasn’t my time. Nowadays I think I could have continued. Maybe I could have played in Canada, or caught on with another team.”

Arrington was named Purdue’s Most Valuable Player for the 1977 season, the first defensive player to win the award in 20 years, after setting a school record with 179 tackles. He was drafted in the 10th round by Detroit but was released before the preseason began. He returned to Purdue to complete the requirements for his degrees in business and computer science and then had a tryout with the New York Jets in 1979. A lower-back injury forced him out of football, but he’s kept himself in shape and is mostly pain-free today.

Arrington, a Fort Wayne native, is still well-remembered for his head-on collision with Forystek. It’s often the first thing mentioned when he’s introduced at Purdue functions, but it often doesn’t need to be stated. Purdue fans tend to know already, as Arrington was reminded when he attended the Purdue basketball team’s NCAA tournament victory over Tennessee last March in Detroit.

“I was sitting next to a guy and his grandkids,” he recalls. “I was talking to them, shooting the breeze, and we introduced ourselves. As soon as I said my name he said, ‘Oh, you’re the guy who knocked out the Notre Dame quarterback!’ He started introducing me to all these people around him. They were inviting me to their homes and wanting to get together.

“They don’t forget that play, man.”

Fate

One can only imagine how history would have been altered if not for Arrington’s devastating hit on Forystek.

If Montana had not played and Purdue had held on to win the game, Notre Dame likely would not have won the national championship, and Devine would have been fired after the season.

If Forystek could have played well enough to finish the game, he might have started the rest of the season, and perhaps positioned himself to play in the NFL.

If Montana had not gotten a chance to play that day, or had thrown an interception on his first pass and been yanked in favor of Lisch, who knows? He had not played on the varsity as a freshman in Parseghian’s last season. He came off Devine’s bench to lead two comeback victories in 1975 but had to sit out the ’76 season with injuries. He began the ’77 season as the third-string quarterback and, as Young recalls, appeared to be “in the doghouse.” He had been highly recruited for basketball out of high school as well, and it’s been reported he was thinking of asking Digger Phelps if he could join Notre Dame’s basketball team instead.

Regardless, it was clear Montana and Devine were not in sync. Tight end Ken MacAfee once recalled Montana’s place on the depth chart as a “weird deal.” Another teammate, fullback Steve Orsini, said Montana was often teased in later years about being a desperation measure.

“I’m sure in Coach Devine’s mind he was thinking, ‘Damn! I’m down to Montana,’” Orsini told a Montana biographer.

Arrington solved the conflict, although at Forystek’s expense.

Arrington, who had earned the nickname “The Hammer” because of his hard-hitting style long before injuring Forystek, wrote a letter to Forystek to apologize and wish him well. “A very kind letter,” Forystek remembers. Arrington also reached out to Montana by mail. One of Arrington’s Purdue teammates, Keena Turner, became a longtime teammate of Montana’s in San Francisco, which solidified their connection.

Arrington and his wife happened to be in Las Vegas one day when Montana was appearing across the street at Caesar’s Palace to promote a book. He walked over and asked a security guard to tell Joe that he was outside. Montana sent word to bring him in and introduced him to the crowd.

“He told me he would never forget me,” Arrington said. “He said, ‘You were a difference-maker in my life.’”

Arrington and Forystek both wound up in Michigan after limping out of football, within driving distance of each other. Arrington traveled the world in various executive capacities for IBM before retiring in 2012. Forystek worked in the high-tech software industry. Both stay busy today as consultants.

Their paths crossed briefly early this century at a high school football game. Forystek had taken over as coach of the Divine Child team in Dearborn. Arrington’s son played for St. Mary’s. Arrington watched from the sideline as a member of the chain gang. He remembers his son, who went on to play at Northwestern, knocking Forystek’s son out of the game for a couple of plays.

Arrington says he and Forystek were able to acknowledge each other occasionally and quietly during the game with brief “sidebar conversations” but did not have a real encounter. Forystek once told a reporter he looked for Arrington after the game but couldn’t find him.

Arrington would like to have that conversation today. After all, he and Forystek have never properly met. They live only 45 miles apart, Forystek in Plymouth, Michigan, and Arrington in Rochester Hills. They surely would have plenty to talk about.

“I need to close that chapter,” Arrington says. “It would make me feel better and hopefully help him, too.”

Forystek would be fine with that. He watched a grainy video of the play several years after the fact, and while he didn’t find it entertaining, he holds no bitterness. Just part of the game.

“I wouldn’t mind speaking to him and see where he’s at and talk about his life and what happened that day,” he says.

If only Montana could join them. They could dive deep into a discussion of the impact one fateful moment can have on a life.•

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Montieth, an Indianapolis native, is a longtime newspaper reporter and freelance writer. He is the author of three books: “Passion Play: Coach Gene Keady and the Purdue Boilermakers,” “Reborn: The Pacers and the Return of Pro Basketball to Indianapolis,” and “Extra Innings: My Life in Baseball,” with former Indianapolis Indians President Max Schumacher.