On the magnificent cover: Mark Stepnoski, which is the most 1988 All-American lineman name I can imagine. Maybe if he’d been a defensive lineman he could have stopped West Virginia quarterback–and former Pittsburgh (as in the city) high school player of the year–Major Harris from rolling over the Panthers, 31-10.
The 80s apparently belonged to Illinois, even down to the back cover of their gameday programs, which for the 1981 Iowa game featured an ad for some television hijacking computer board game hybrid thing called The Quest For The Rings for a Magnavox-made video game console called the Odyssey 2. Colecovision, Tandyvision… I thought I’d…
You see it in posters, media guides, etc. But rarely does a program feature a photo that so literally adheres to a theme. Or, you know, feature a theme at all. And this one is so fly — Tony Robinson handing a football to beautiful Tennessee cheerleader in the cockpit of some sort of military…
January 11, 1987. Awesome cover (via The War Eagle Reader) featuring Bo Jackson being Bo Jackson (he dominated—and got the girl) in the 1986 game.
The No. 2 Texas Longhorns beat the Penn State Nittany Lions 28-3 at Giants Stadium in New Jersey on Sept. 24, 1984. Neutral site, neutral program (more like Nittany Bears). Here’s the stat sheet.