Tony Holmes, The Texas Longhorn Who Made NCAA Football History in 1998 By Recovering Two Failed Extra Point Attempts In a Single Game And Returning Them For Two Points Each
1998 - Iowa State @ Austin - The game itself wasn't that great. Sloppy defense on Texas' part allowed Iowa State's Bandhauer to throw 437 yards of passing offense and 5 touchdowns. But Ricky Williams rushed for 350 yards on 37 carries for 5 touchdowns. The five TDs pushed him ahead of Indiana's Anthony Thompson as the NCAA career rushing touchdown leader with 65 touchdowns and six games left to play. The 350 yards made Ricky UT's single game rushing record holder finally surpassing Roosevelt Leak's 342 yard record set in 1973 versus SMU in the Cotton Bowl. Ricky came mighty close in the previous game versus Rice when he only had 318 yards and six touchdowns. At the conclusion of the ISU game, Ricky moved to fourth place in career rushing yards with 800 needed to surpass Tony Dorsett with 6 games to go. The game also had Texas' first block of an opponent's extra point conversion with return for 2 points. Joe Walker blocked the kick and Tony Holmes ran it 93 yards for two points. Tony enjoyed the run so much he duplicated the feat returning an intecepted try-for-two 104 yards for another 2 points. Returning two failed extra point conversions for 4 total points was another NCAA record.
A return of a failed two-point conversion happened this weekend in the Oklahoma-Oklahoma State game:
OSU quarterback Zac Robinson fumbled on a two-point conversion and the Sooners’ Frank Alexander returned the ball all the way to the other end zone for two points with 11:12 left in the third quarter.
And did you know that 2008 is the 50th anniversary of the two-point conversion?
Some of the most storied plays in college football history have occurred when the clock isn’t running. The NCAA Football Rules Committee adopted the two-point conversion in January 1958, and in the 50 years that have followed, fans of the game have enjoyed the intrigue of the momentum-shifting play. Former NCAA Secretary-Rules Editor John Adams said the play wasn’t even intended for the strategy it generates today; rather, the committee wanted to increase scoring and maintain the balance between offense and defense.
Adams, who has spent more than 60 years contributing to the game as an on-field official, supervisor of officials and working on the rules committee, said the idea of having a two-point conversion was first conceived in 1940. The proposal never gained enough momentum to become a rule, though, and the concept went dormant until the late 1950s when Irish Krieger, a rules committee member and a former supervisor of officials for the Big Ten Conference, resurrected the idea of giving offenses the option of gaining an extra point on the scoreboard.
See also my previous post Football Trivia: Yes, The Defense Can Score On An Extra-Point Conversion Attempt
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