If Mark Bisbing remembers the game as if it was yesterday, there’s a good reason – the game yesterday was very similar.

In 1980, Bisbing was a freshman center on the Muhlenberg football team that pulled off a comeback for the ages. Playing their first home game of the season a week after winning at Franklin & Marahall, the Mules trailed Johns Hopkins 38-14 entering the fourth quarter. They scored 27 points in the last 11 minutes, including the winning touchdown on an untimed down after time expired, for a 41-38 win.

Yesterday, Muhlenberg (in its home opener a week after winning at F&M) again stunned a visiting team from Maryland by scoring 27 points in the fourth quarter. This time the victim was McDaniel, which took a 26-7 lead early in the second quarter and seemed to be in complete control, only to fall 34-26.

Garrett Bisbing

Mark Bisbing’s son, Garrett Bisbing, is the current Mules’ starting right guard and blocked an extra point in yesterday’s game.

“You can play for many years without going through a game like that,” said Mark. “That I got to play in a game like that, and now have Garrett play in a game like that – that’s pretty neat.”

Muhlenberg has scored more than 27 points in a quarter on five occasions since the 1980 game, but not in the fourth quarter. The last comeback from more than two touchdowns came in 2007, when the Mules trailed Dickinson 17-0 before winning 29-24, but in that game they had closed the gap to 17-16 by halftime.

How do the two epic comebacks compare? The circumstances in the 1980 game made that comeback a little more improbable. Muhlenberg recovered two onside kicks during the rally and got the benefit of two penalty calls on the final drive, one a personal foul after a fourth-down sack and the other a pass interference call in the end zone on the last play.

“I’ve heard that story a few times,” said Garrett, a junior. “I have a friend who goes to Hopkins. He was over at my house this summer and my dad was telling us about the 1980 game. Jim Margraff, the Hopkins coach, was their quarterback then.”

On the other hand, yesterday’s comeback seemed to come out of nowhere.

“Yesterday’s comeback stunned me because of the sheer way we stunk up the joint in the first three quarters,” said Mark, who was the third-string center in 1980 but got to play the whole fourth quarter after the two players ahead of him suffered injuries. “I didn’t think we had it in us.”

“I was trying to stay positive, thinking, we just have to score,” said Garrett. “Everything about it was just unbelievable.”

Mark watched the game from the stands with his mother  and a teammate from the 1980 team. As the comeback unfolded, both turned to him at various times, independently of each other, and said “this is just like Hopkins in 1980.”

The 1980 football team was the last coached by Frank Marino, and this was the first home football game for Muhlenberg since his passing in January. It was also the first football game at Scotty Wood Stadium since “Frank Marino Field” was added to the scoreboard.

“Frank would have been going nuts,” said Mark. “He would have loved it.”

If it happened twice, it could happen a third time, right? So if it’s the year 2042, and you’re on a visiting team that has a big lead on Muhlenberg after three quarters, and if the Mules have a lineman named Bisbing … let’s just say you can plan on a long bus ride home.