Sean G. Wieber
Sean G. Wieber
Wieber, holding the 2000 Big Ten Conference championship trophy at the team’s 10-year reunion.
Wieber, holding the 2000 Big Ten Conference championship trophy at the team’s 10-year reunion.

The hand that forced perhaps the biggest fumble in Northwestern history has never been seen.

Fans who watched the TV broadcast of Northwestern’s 54-51 upset over Michigan on Nov. 4, 2000, didn’t see the hand tug the nose of the football, causing it to drop from the grasp of Wolverines running back Anthony Thomas.

Fans watching live at Ryan Field probably didn’t see the hand. The broadcasters sure didn’t; one announcer said Thomas simply dropped the football.

Wildcats on the sideline — such as backup linebacker Robert J. Barz — didn’t see the hand. Neither did Raheem Covington, the Northwestern cornerback who recovered the fumble.

And with no photo to be found online, the hand that forced the so-called phantom fumble will stay just that: a phantom.

There was, of course, one person who saw the hand at work. The man whose hand did the deed: Sean G. Wieber, an associate at Winston & Strawn LLP.

“It’s not a punch,” Wieber said while watching a replay, referring to a common technique for forcing fumbles. “He’s carrying the ball here, and I have my hand on the ball. He’s already lost it at that point in time.”

He paused the clip, looking at the ball on the grass and Thomas still running.

“It’s so weird,” Wieber said. “He doesn’t even know.”

Invisible star

The hand that forced the fumble should never have been on the field.

Not because Wieber, a junior, started the season as a backup safety. And not because he was recruited as a punter.

Wieber shouldn’t have been on the field because people from Perkins High School in Sandusky, Ohio, didn’t play Division I football.

“It happened very rarely,” Wieber said. “Even though we had had some good players, we’d never had anyone in the modern era who had gone on (to Division I).”

Wieber was as good a candidate as any. His senior year, he was named all-conference at tight end, safety and punter.

He ended up with offers to several Division III schools in Ohio, a few schools in the Mid-American Conference, an academic scholarship to Dartmouth and an offer to join the Northwestern football team as a walk-on player.

“It was clear to me that you go to the best academic institution you can get into,” Wieber said.

“Once I visited here with my father and I met with (Northwestern coach Gary) Barnett and they said, ‘We want you to come to Northwestern,’ all the rest of it was contacting schools and letting them know I wasn’t going to be accepting their offer — which were easy phone calls to make. It was a no-brainer.”

The connections from that no-brainer eventually led Wieber to IIT Chicago-Kent College of Law and later to Winston & Strawn, where as a commercial litigator he defended former Gov. James R. Thompson and then-Gov. Rod Blagojevich in separate civil lawsuits and worked with the team defending Gov. George Ryan in his federal racketeering, conspiracy and fraud case.

He was also part of the special prosecutor’s team appointed to investigate whether charges should be brought against former mayor Richard Daley’s nephew, R.J. Vanecko, over the death of David Koschman.

More importantly for Northwestern football fans, Wieber’s no-brainer led to him being on the field as Thomas burst through the line, dashing toward daylight and, seemingly, the touchdown to come.

A purple-hued miracle

When Northwestern and Michigan meet on Saturday in Evanston, each will take the field with a losing record.

But 14 years ago, on that fall day in 2000, both schools were 6-2 and ranked in the top 25. By now, Wieber was the starting free safety after an injury earlier in the year to Rashad Morton.

Michigan’s success was foreseeable: They eventually sent 24 players to the NFL, about 20 percent of their roster.

Northwestern was in the midst of a surprise season — they went 3-8 in 1999 but had already defeated No. 7 Wisconsin and No. 18 Michigan State.

The combination of Michigan’s star power and Northwestern’s newfound appeal led ABC to select the game as the network’s national game of the week.

Thus, the game’s 11 a.m. start time was bumped to 2:30 p.m., prompting Northwestern to set up additional lights in the stadium to be turned on for the second half.

As Anderson said in a 2010 interview with chicitysports.com: “I remember in pregame walk-through the night before … thinking to myself, ‘I feel sorry for whoever has to catch a ball in these lights.’”

For a while, the lights played as big a role as the defenses: none. Michigan led 28-10 with six minutes left in the half, but Northwestern came back, trailing at halftime 28-23.

“I remember being on the sideline and the offensive linemen were like, ‘Guys, you need to get a stop,’” said Covington, the aforementioned Northwestern cornerback.

“We couldn’t stop them, but they couldn’t stop us either.”

No kidding.

The scoring barrage continued in the third quarter, with Michigan entering the fourth up 45-36. Michigan’s ability to score made sense. They had future pros at quarterback (Drew Henson), running back (Thomas), wide receiver (David Terrell, Marquise Walker) and offensive line (including seven-time Pro Bowl pick Steve Hutchinson).

Northwestern kept pace with both talent and playcalling. If the latter seemed prescient, that’s because it was.

“We were calling plays based on their defense,” Wieber said.

Not audibles. Plays.

With the Wildcats no-huddle spread offense, the team got to the line of scrimmage with nearly the entire 40-second play clock yet to elapse. Northwestern’s coaches sitting high above the field interpreted the Michigan defense and called a play.

They sent that play down to the Northwestern sideline, then the coaches on the sideline used hand signals to communicate the play to quarterback Zak Kustok.

“It was like a video game,” Wieber said.

With 12:30 to go, Northwestern kicked a field goal to take its first lead since the first quarter, 46-45. Michigan retook the lead on a short touchdown run by Thomas.

That set up the game’s two most memorable plays.

With 1:44 remaining and the Wildcats trailing 51-46, Northwestern faced 4th-and-goal from the 13-yard line. Wieber was on the sideline with Barz, a linebacker who began his career at quarterback. Because of his position switch, Barz knew the hand signals.

“Oh my god, watch this,” Wieber recalls Barz telling him. “We’re running D.A. on the wheel. He’s going to be wide open.”

“D.A.” was Anderson. “The wheel” meant Anderson snuck to the left sideline.

“Most teams have a play that they know is going to work in any given week,” said Barz, now a partner at K&L Gates. “The way their defense was lined up against us, we knew that if they were playing man coverage and blitzed, that no one would be covering Damien.”

Sure enough, Kustok faked a handoff to Anderson and dropped back to pass as Anderson ran to the left. And sure enough, not one Michigan defender was within five yards of him.

Because Michigan blitzed, Kustok had to lob the ball. It floated toward Anderson, coming down over his back right shoulder. He slowed to catch it, his hands in the air, the lights in his eyes.

The ball hit his hands and fell to the ground.

“It was a soft pass,” Covington said. “When he didn’t catch it, it was like, ‘Wow, I can’t believe this just happened.’”

Northwestern had two timeouts, meaning they could get the ball with time left if the defense stopped Michigan.

That final hope seemed to disappear when, on 2nd-and-3 with 55 seconds to go, Thomas took a handoff and ripped past the first down marker.

As the safety at the top of the formation, Wieber’s responsibility was to keep his blocker on his right shoulder to force the runner inside toward the defense.

“God, look at that,” Wieber said as he watched the replay. “It’s the parting of the seas.”

That’s when two right hands met: Thomas’s holding the ball, Wieber’s knocking it free. By the time Thomas noticed the fumble, he was two steps past the ball, which was laying on the grass.

Covington, the cornerback, spotted it immediately.

“I’m the only person here,” Covington thought as soon as he saw the ball.

He pounced on it with 47 seconds remaining. With 20 seconds left, the Wildcats bagged the game-winning touchdown.

Northwestern 54. Michigan 51.

“Later in the film room, (Wieber) was like, ‘I caused the fumble. I can’t believe I caused the fumble,’” Covington recalled. “It was miraculous. It was out of nowhere.”

The team went on to be co-Big Ten champions — their third conference title since 1937 — and earned an invitation to the Alamo Bowl.

The miracle lives on.

On Oct. 18, Wieber and Barz attended the Northwestern-Nebraska game in Evanston. In the stands, a few fans recognized Wieber, including one Wildcats fan about 50 years old.

“Oh my God, Sean Wieber,” Barz recalls the man saying. “The Michigan game. Anthony Thomas.”

“It’s just funny,” Wieber said later. “You have to be a true fan to have any idea it’s me.”