Former Stanford center and current broadcaster Mike McLaughlin spent some time with me talking about Stanford football. Here we talk about some memories from the playing field:
Q: My playing career lasted through High school, but when I reflect there are three plays burned into my mind, two plays are positive and one is negative, from your career do you have a handful of plays that are just burned into your mind? Sounds like your play in the Rose Bowl would count as one, but are there are a couple of more?
Most of my memories are probably more humorous side. Probably the one that sticks out the most in my head, it was the year we ran up the score on UCLA at home. Joe Borchard came in for Todd Husak and threw like four or five touchdowns or something. One of them was a 95 yard pass to Troy Walters. Coach Willingham had this archaic rule that everyone had to run down to the end zone to celebrate. As a lineman the last thing you want to do is run 95 yards during a game. You just want to go to the sideline and drink Gatorade. So I am lumbering down the sideline and about 2-3 yards on the field past the team area was the Stanford tree. I have never been a big fan of the tree so I ended up shoving the tree off the field. David Gonzalez got a great picture of me shoving the tree off of the field. It kind of led to a big joke on the team about keeping me away from the tree. So that was always one play that I remember
The other one I remember, I moved from center to guard for a series, I don’t remember what game that was. Blaine Maxfield was the back up center and he came in. Chad Hutchinson was the quarterback and Blaine snapped the ball past Chad’s head. I don’t know what happened, if there was a miscommunication or not. Since I never came out - I was in on practically every play - the TV reporters sat there and said that McLaughlin snapped the ball past Hutchinson’s head. So after the game all my friends gave me crap about that play. And I was like “I was playing guard I was not even at center.” So after that Blaine and I had a running gag. If something bad happened Blaine would say “no, Mike was in” or I would say it was Blaine.
There are players I remember playing against. Daryl Russell when he was at USC. We had to actually find a way to knock him out of the game because he was kicking our butts so much.
Q: Tell me about knocking Daryl Russell out of the game. Were you successful with that?
(laughter)
Q: Was this a scene from MASH? Was there a needle on the sideline?
We had a play that was called 66-booster. The guard would pull. Russell was a 3-technique which means he would line up on the outside shoulder of the guard on either side of the ball. And we had a play where the guard would pull, and the tackle would block out on the end. But for that game we had the tackle stick his hand under the shoulder pad to stand Russell up and I would come flying out of the center position right at his knee. That tends to really take the wind out of a guy because he is trying to protect his knee. At the time it was a totally legal block. But after the fourth or fifth series, right before halftime, we finally knocked him out of the game. The next year they ended up creating a rule that was basically based on that block. You can’t do that anymore because of that specific game.
Q: Do you ever take credit for the McLaughlin rule?
My coach said they created a McLaughlin rule. (Laughter). The rule is no two non-adjacent linemen can block high-low on a defensive lineman. Meaning a tackle and a center or a guard and a guard can not have one block high while the other goes low. You have to be adjacent to do that.
OTHER ARTICLES IN THE SERIES
PART TWO: Remembering the Rose Bowl year
Comments