Reunion week

 Here comes Mark Herrmann again, skinny as a keyhole, and he's throwing and Dave Young is catching and, hey, wait, isn't Notre Dame the No. 11 team in the nation? And weren't they supposed to crush these Purdues like a stack of Dixie cups?

Nope. Notre Dame 31, Purdue 24, thanks to one of those epic Joe Montana comebacks, as the Keyhole Kid throws for 351 yards and three scores to scare the bejabbers out of the Irish.

And, look, over here ... it's Bob Griese, tormenting the Irish in Rockne's house. And Dale Samuels, ending Notre Dame's 39-game winning streak. And Terry Hanratty throwing and Jim Seymour catching as the Irish are all over the Boilermakers ... and Lou Holtz beating the Purdues 11 straight times ... and Purdue, a four-touchdown dog, shocking the Irish 31-20 in South Bend behind a one-time punter named Mike Terrizzi ...

On and on. And it all comes back now because the Boilers and the Irish meet again Saturday in South Bend, after a seven-year hiatus that never should have happened because it's just not September in Indiana, somehow, if Purdue and Notre Dame aren't knocking heads.

And speaking of something that never should have happened ...

Almost 900 miles away, down in Norman, Okla., there will be another football game Saturday, and it, too, rings to the touch. Nebraska is coming to town to play Oklahoma, and that hasn't happened in 11 years, and even more than Purdue and Notre Dame parting company for awhile, that's a crime against college football.

Nebraska-Oklahoma?

Why, hell, that's the brown-dirt prairie edition of Alabama-Auburn, or Michigan-Ohio State, or USC-Notre Dame. They've been playing one another since the Taft administration, and back in 1971 they played one of the epic games in college football history, No, 1 Nebraska coming from behind to beat the second-ranked Sooners 35-31 on a gray Thanksgiving Day in Norman.

Who could forget Jack Mildren running and pitching to Greg Pruitt and throwing to Jon Harrison out of the Oklahoma wishbone? Who could forget the Sooners building double-digit leads twice, and then Nebraska running back Jeff Kinney, his  jersey in tatters, clambering over the pile in the dying minutes to give the Huskers the W? And who could forget one of the iconic plays in history, Johnny Rodgers' twisting, weaving, switchbacking 72-yard punt return that gave Nebraska its first score?

And then ...

And then it was 2010, and modern times happened.

Nebraska bolted the Big 12 for the Big Ten. Next year Oklahoma will bolt the Big 12 for the SEC. Someone else will bolt somewhere else for another somewhere, and long-standing rivalries will go dormant, but everyone will make lots and lots of money from one TV deal or another. And it will all be bigger and yet somehow less than before.

But not this weekend. Not this one sweet Saturday.

On that day, we get Purdue-Notre Dame again. We get Nebraska-Oklahoma. We get a great big nostalgia wallow for every lost-in-the-past geezer among us, and it will be glorious.

Enjoy.