It’s only fitting that the most dramatic of major Bowl games in 2014 was saved for last game of all.
I honestly thought we’d seen all the craziness imaginable through a truly spectacular week featuring the Rose, Fiesta, Sugar and Orange Bowls.
However it turns out that those games – chock-full of big plays, points by the handful, wild momentum swings and, in some cases, program-defining moments – were just the entrée.
The main course was the BCS National Championship, in which one of the great college football programs of all time, dormant and in the wilderness for so many years, returned to the pinnacle of the sport, breaking, in the process, the stranglehold that the South Eastern Conference has had on college football’s top step.
In 2014, after a dominant season, the Florida State Seminoles are National Champions, prevailing 34-31 victors in one of the more memorable Bowl Championship Series-era National Championship deciders.
It’s ironic that what you might call the high-water mark of the Bowl Championship Series era came in it’s last game.
The 2014 national title decider, quite fittingly, was a BCS game that will be remembered head and shoulders above most others, perhaps bettered by only bettered by the epic 2006 National Championship Game, also at the Rose Bowl, that knock-down-drag-out slugfest between Vince Young’s Texas Longhorns and Matt Leinart’s USC Trojans.
As football fans, we could not have asked for a more gripping finale. It must be said that I’m a Trojan fan, bleeding cardinal and gold, so I will remember this game with more fondness than the 2006 decider.
Tonight, Florida State did their best 2006 Texas impersonation, with their late-game heroics.
When the Seminoles took the Rose Bowl field on a perfect January night in Pasadena, it wasn’t just sixty minutes of all-in football that separated them from getting their hands on the crystal Coach’s Trophy as the last National Champions of the controversial BCS era, it was a team of destiny on the far sideline: the Auburn Tigers.
Have we ever seen a team quite like the 2013-14 Tigers?
I say no, at least not in recent memory.
The Tigers rebounded from a disastrous three-win season a year ago, and brought in a new head coach in Gus Malzahn, who, as Auburn’s offensive coordinator, played such an enormous role in the last Auburn National Championship, in 2010 with that year’s Heisman Trophy winner Cam Newton running the offense.
This incarnation of Auburn football seemed to have a Guardian Angel on their shoulders.
There was the Hail Mary deep ball, thrown by Auburn quarterback Nick Marshall, that was tipped by a Bulldog defender fell neatly Tiger receiver, Ricardo Lewis’s hands for the winning touchdown against Georgia and the 100-yard return of a missed Alabama field goal for a memorable win as time ran out on a perhaps the greatest of all Iron Bowl contests.
No, the Tigers didn’t have the same depth of athletes on their sideline, but they had a seemingly irresistible roll on, and made a name for themselves for being able to conjure up ridiculous plays whenever they needed something to shift momentum.
As far as improbable runs go…well, I’ve never seen one quite like it.
Charting their gripping wins week in week out was one of the joys of the season for me. Rarely did anyone play more entertaining football than Auburn did. It was great to watch.
Despite a loss that will sting for some time to come, the Tigers deserve to be lauded for how far they’ve risen. 3-9 last year, including a winless 0-8 record in SEC play saw head coach Gene Chizik fired less than two years after delivering a National Championship.
A few days ago, I put my thoughts out there, and tipped Florida State, but there was a nagging suspicion lingering on the edge of my mind.
I hadn’t exactly covered myself in glory, not getting any BCS Bowl right, and I was concerned about my pick for this one, too.
Why?
Simple. If there was a team likely to snatch a win of this ilk, a team likely to snatch the coach’s trophy out of the hands of the highly-favoured Seminoles, it’s Auburn.
With the way they’ve won games this season, I wasn’t prepared to dismiss them as the double digit underdogs they were heading in. I just couldn’t ignore what they’ve done all year long, resurgent under the brilliant offense mind of Malzahn.
Football has a strange way of tossing up unexpected results. Look at the run of underdog victories in the Rose, Fiesta, Sugar and Orange Bowls as proof of that.
Too many big games turn out to be busts, not nearly worthy of the pre-game hype that’s attached to them. Alabama and LSU in 2011 is the perfect example.
Thankfully, the 2014 BCS National Championship Game didn’t fall into that category. No, not even close.
This was football from the top shelf. We saw a little of everything.
By the end, when Florida State stormed onto the Rose Bowl field to celebrate as National Champions, there wasn’t much more that I could say other than, “Wow!”
In the Iron Bowl on Thanksgiving Weekend, it was Auburn coming from behind, storming through, over and around the fancied and favoured Alabama Crimson Tide.
At the Rose Bowl on Monday night, it was the Tigers who had the lead and were overrun spectacularly by a Florida State team who had trailed, in thirteen games previous to this National Championship tilt, for a combined time of less than forty minutes.
The old adage is that football is a game of two halves. Rarely has that saying been proven truer than it was in this contest. Auburn came out of the box and jumped all over the Seminoles.
Where the Tigers looked prepared and ready to play, Florida State seemed like they were fast asleep, and quickly found themselves in a 21-3 hole. I couldn’t believe my eyes.
It’s not an exaggeration to say that the Seminoles were being dominated in every facet of the game.
It was a committed and impressive first half from the Tigers.
Birthday boy, Jameis Winston, the Heisman Trophy-winning Florida State quarterback, looked shaky and uncertain in the face of the pressure brought by the Tiger defence. He was – and you’ll pardon the pun – mauled by the Tigers at times, and telegraphed some throws badly.
Slowly at first, old Uncle Mo – momentum – started to swing in the Seminoles’ favour.
Down for the first time at half time, the Seminoles clawed their way back in. I saw signs of a resurgence late in the third quarter as FSU suddenly discovered the offense that had seen them beat up on opponents en route to the BCS National Championship.
Jameis Winston morphed from a guy who looked overawed on the big stage to the quarterback we’d seen shred defences all year long.
With Winston’s rise, so came Florida State.
Few could have predicted the wold twists and turns that fourth quarter provided: thirty-one points in all and a storybook end.
Hollywood, just a short drive down the freeway from the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, could scarcely have come up with anything more dramatic.
A Marshall interception gave the Florida State the football, and the ensuing touchdown brought the ‘Noles to within one until an Auburn field goal gave the Tigers a 24-20 lead.
Four scores in the final five minutes. I was calling my friends, telling them to switch on ESPN.
It was like a heavyweight fight, back and forth, attack and counterattack. Florida State’s Levonte Whitfield ensured his place in Seminole football lore, returning the ensuing kickoff back one hundred yards, and Florida State regained the lead, 27-24.
The gauntlet was thrown down and Auburn responded, with RB Tre Mason (who had a scintillating night, carrying the football thirty-four times for 195 yards and a touchdown) running 36 yards for a touchdown.
If the Tigers had prevailed, I believe Mason would’ve been named Offensive MVP.
The ‘Noles tacklers could scarcely stop him. Like Clemson’s Sammy Watkins in the Orange Bowl, when Auburn needed a big play, Mason was there to deliver.
Right down to the end, the result was up in the air. Until Famous Jameis took over, orchestrating a masterful offensive show, a drive of timely perfection.
He was 6-7 for 77 yards and a touchdown on the game-winning drive, which was capped by a two-yard catch from dependable WR Kelvin Benjamin with just thirteen seconds remaining after a Pass Interference call on Chris Davis, the hero of the Alabama win.
The touchdown gave FSU a 24-10 scoring edge in the second half.
Still, 0:13 to play. We held our breath, remembering games past – Alabama and Georgia fans possibly suffering momentary heart burn – wondering if lighting could strike thrice…but there no last miracle for Auburn, and so Florida State had it’s place in history as the last BCS National Champions.
Next year, college football’s brand new dawn: a national playoff system.
I can’t wait to see what that brings.
Perhaps the era closed tonight was best summed up by ESPN’s veteran play-by-play man Brent Musburger – who might have called his last big-time game of college football, if the swirling rumours are to be believed – who called the 2014 BCS National Championship a “perfect end to an imperfect system.”
An imperfect system, certainly, but one that will be more fondly remembered than it might otherwise have been, thanks to what transpired at the Rose Bowl in front of 94,208 fans on Monday night as Jimbo Fisher’s men brought one of America’s traditional powerhouses back to glory.
I already can’t wait for spring football and the beginning of the season in Auburn. I suspect they’ll be partying hard down in Tallahassee, until at least those early spring practices!
The SEC’s National Championship-winning domination is finally over after seven years. Congratulations, Florida State, deserved National Champions. What a season!
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