The victorious football coach was so damn mad he couldn’t even go to the locker room. Not until he stopped seething. Not until he got answers.
Not until he understood a scene so humiliating that reporters would ask him about it for decades to come. So he stormed into the tunnel at Giants Stadium searching for his athletic director — and an explanation. “I’m not gonna say the exact language I used,” former Rutgers coach Doug Graber recalled.
“But I said, ‘Who’s in charge of the effing horse?’” Yes, that horse. The horse. Lord Nelson, the charismatic Rutgers mascot who prematurely galloped onto the field and into sports infamy on Oct.
8, 1994, nearly costing the Scarlet Knights a much-needed victory over Army. For 30 years, Lord Nelson’s folly has lived on as one of college football’s most bizarre penalties. The mascot’s 15-yard unsportsmanlike conduct flag for sprinting across the field during play led to a crucial missed extra point attempt — and exemplified Rutgers’ reputation as a sad sack program trapped in the twilight zone of big-time college football.
“We even got a dumbass horse around here,” Graber fumed after his much-hyped team eked out the win despite being a heavy favorite. He can laugh about it now. But that fateful autumn Saturday remains indelible for Rutgers fans old enough to remember.
And Lord Nelson’s inner circle will never forget it. To this day, memories of that afternoon and the media blitz that followed haunt his for.
