Road to 1991 Perfection: Against Arizona, Was a Whole Lot of Shakin' Going On
An unforgettable moment from the 1991 national championship season was outside linebacker Jaime Fields and defensive tackle Steve Emtman rising off the Husky Stadium artificial turf and breaking into something that resembled a Saturday Night Live skit.
In tandem, these University of Washington football players began to gyrate furiously, making the crowd howl.
This was no "Hans and Franz" routine — these animated Huskies did a rendition of the "Compton Quake."
Fields and Emtman shook and shook in celebration of a huge hit administered to Arizona, a 54-0 loser and the fourth victim in the Huskies' 12-0 run to football perfection.
This is another in a series of articles and videos that will replay the UW's 1991 national championship season, which is the apex of Husky football. We're a month out from the California road opener to start the 2020 season. Meantime, we'll use '91 as a conversation piece.
Throughout this week, we'll remember the 5-foot-11, 230-pound Fields, who remains one of the hardest-hitting Huskies in program annals though he no longer with us.
"You see him on the field and you see this monster, this guy who's a beast, this animal," All-America wide receiver Mario Bailey said. "Knowing him, he was this nice, funny practical joker. Almost like Jekyll and Hyde."
We can't call Fields or get him on a virtual Zoom meeting because sadly he was killed in 1999 in a hit-and-run accident in Downey, California, a dozen miles south of downtown Los Angeles. He was returning home at 2:20 a.m. after celebrating his 29th birthday when another driver ran a red light, struck Fields' 1991 BMW broadside and ran away on foot.
The former UW and Kansas City Chiefs football player was pronounced dead at the scene. The man responsible for the accident turned himself in 18 hours later. Fifty of Fields' UW teammates rushed to L.A. for his funeral.
"I fly over the grave site all the time coming into LAX," Ed Cunningham, the 1991 starting center and a Los Angeles film producer, once said. "I always take time to say something to him. He's buried near the Forum. If it's a clear day, I can pick out where his plot is."
Yet on a memorable October afternoon in 1991, Fields broke into a celebratory dance that he brought with him from his Compton hometown, getting the lumbering Emtman to join in.
Naturally this show of football enthusiasm ran contrary to UW coach Don James' policy against excessive celebration, as Bailey pointed out in the video. On this team, they all got called into James' office for a reminder at some point.
The coach, however, gave this group and "the Compton Quake" a little more leeway.
"They came a long way since I got there," Bailey said of the coaching staff. "Jaime would have been suspended or kicked off the team for doing something like that before."
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