1989 UCSB Black Tide
National Champion
The game didn't start until very late and again it was a slow game because of windy conditions. At 8-8 the game was capped because the sun had already set and it was quickly getting dark. They scored to go up 9-8. We turned it over, and they had the disc on the goal line but couldn't punch it in due to a spectacular block by Jared Tausig in the back of the endzone. (That play was a mixed blessing for Jared. In making that block he trashed his knee so badly that he couldn't play the rest of Regionals).
We worked it down and scored, 9-9. They turned over their first pass on the next point, and we punched it in to send them home. Stanford took their airline tickets, and the next morning Doug the Bum called the real estate agent and took their beach house.
It re-affirms one's belief in the fundamentally ironical nature of reality when people who are so richly deserving of a kick in the head get what's coming to them. It is a gratifying bonus to be the agent of that head-kicking.
The next year, 1990, we almost completed the West Coast trifecta. Early in the year we ordered some national champion shirts. They were supposed to say "National Champions 1988, 1989", instead they said "National Champions 1988-1990". Since this was January of 1990 we seemed to have gone down the same road as Stanford and Berkeley before us. The only thing that saved us was that we absolutely refused to wear them until the season was over, no matter what happened. I think Zippy wore his a few times underneath his playing jersey, but they never saw the light of day until we made it true.