Bert Jones: LSU Photograph Collection,
RG #A5000, Louisiana State University Archives,
LSU Libraries, Baton Rouge, LA.
John Ferguson: As you came, Bert, to the last two minutes and forty seconds, I think you had first down, ten to go on your own twenty-yard line and you’re facing an uphill battle. And I’d like to know the circumstances and the feeling and the communication among all of the men on the field at that time as you started that . . . what turned out to be a fateful drive.
Bert Jones: Well, I don’t think that we really were as aware of the circumstances as what we are now. There are not many occasions, certainly in my playing career, in high school, college and professional ranks, that you have the opportunity to do what we did on offense in that game. And that is that the game was yours if you could go and take it. And the whole thing was set on this one drive. And every play was just as important as what was going to be the next because we literally had to go eighty yards. We knew that we didn’t have much time. What did we have? One time-out left?
Ferguson: Two [minutes] forty [seconds], yeah.
Jones: And it was a lot of fun because we literally were playing hurry-up football. And we didn’t do that a lot, because we were a very strong football team and we didn’t have to do that. So it was an aggressive approach on offense, being able to throw the ball and, like you said, there were so many big plays. I think . . . What did we have? Two fourth-down plays?
Tyler LaFauci: Three. Yeah.
Jones: Three. See? Tyler’s memory’s a lot better than mine. [Ferguson laughs] But it was just a great feeling to go in and be able to have a drive, take the drive, go in and score and know that once you scored that you had won the ballgame of what possibly was going to be, and still can be, one of the biggest games of your whole entire life.
-- Bert Jones and Tyler LaFauci, interviewed by John Ferguson, 1993