September 21, 2024
With zeroes on the clock and after rolling
left, Shedeur Sanders is about to unleash the Hail Mary that was answered when CU wide receiver LeJohntay Webster managed
to make the scooping catch, enabling the Buffaloes to get the game to overtime. Here's the video of the play via @CUBuffs and the game highlights via espn.com.
BOULDER -- Thirty years ago Tuesday, I was in a press box in Greenville, Noth Carolina,
watching Syracuse face East Carolina.
I was shadowing Syracuse linebacker Dan Conley, and others, for a Sporting News
story on what then was a rarity -- players who were granted medical redshirts and were finishing up their college careers
as sixth-year seniors.
I heard a roar behind me in the commons area, where several
televisions were on and tuned to the ABC national game.
I
knew something spectacular or surprising had just happened.
I scrambled up the stairs and watched the Buffaloes
celebrating, then the replays of the Miracle at Michigan, with Keith Jackson and Bob Griese on the ABC call.
Kordell Stewart to Michael Westbrook, 64 yards, touchdown.
Hail Mary.
Whoa Nellie.
Whether Saturday night's
unlikely Buffaloes' 38-31 win over Baylor will live on as another of the program's "where were you when ...?"
moments is a question for down the road.
But the memory would have to be a package -- first, the 43-yard touchdown pass from
Shedeur Sanders-to-LeJohntay Wester on the final play of regulation, forcing overtime.
That play wasn't as spectacular as Stewart-to-Westbrook,
which involved a pack of Buffs and Wolverines going up together for a jump ball and Westbrook coming down with the ball.
This time, Wester
was curiously and relatively open, curling in slightly from the end zone sideline and getting his hands under the ball as
he slid.
“I rolled left, everybody went in the middle of the end
zone and I just trusted God,” Shedeur Sanders said. “I just threw it up to God and God answered the prayer, for
sure.”
On that play, Travis Hunter -- who had seven receptions for
130 yards while continuing his remarkable routine of playing and making difference-making plays both ways -- essentially became
a decoy.
“They had three people on me, and everybody else backside
had a 1-on-1 chance,” Hunter said. “So I just know, sometimes you’ve got to step back and let the team go
ahead and play their role and let them come down with a good play. So, I trusted the process.”
So the Buffs got the
game to OT and took a 38-31 lead after Micah Welch's 1-yard TD run. But Baylor seemed on the verge of extending the game to
a second OT when the Bears reached the CU 2 with a first-and goal.
Then came the play that ended the game and added to both Hunter's Heisman Trophy resume and to the game's possible memorable status among program lore.
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See: Rocky Mountain Showdown: The Amazing Mr. Hunter
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The Bears' Dominic Richardson took a handoff and seemed destined to score, but Hunter stepped
up, lowered his shoulder and made the upending hit that caused Richardson to lose the ball perhaps only inches before crossing
the goal line. After a scramble, it rolled through and out of the end zone. Game over. With CU students (and others) storming
the field, the call stood through a confirming video review and the rush from the stands was renewed.
“Shedeur told me to go out there and
get the ball once we scored,” Hunter said. “So I told him, ‘I got you,’ and I kept my word. I mean,
I knew I had to tackle. You could see me putting in my mouthpiece late on the play, so I was already ready. I knew they was
coming at me. They don’t think I could tackle, so I had to show them.”
Before Baylor's
overtime possession, Shedeur Sanders had a request for Hunter.
“T told me ‘I’m gonna go get a pick,'”
the Buffs' quarterback said.“I said ‘Make sure you do.’ He went out and made a play that was amazing. That’s
stuff T does.”
Here's the video of Hunter's tackle via @CFBONFOX.
“Great,
great, great, great, great win,” Deion Sanders said. “These young men were resilient. They never gave up, never
surrendered.”
Of
the wild finish, including the storming of the field, Sanders noted: "I don’t like what transpired at the end of the game but I love what
transpired at the end of the game."
I've belittled the frequently low standards for storming the filed in college football
and basketball. I mean, beating a directional NAIA school probably isn't worth that sort of celebration. I also get that having
multitudes of celebrating and lubricated students on the field, at least temporarily among grumpy opposing players is a formula
for trouble and also could make a school legally vulnerable.
But this one? How it happened brought the students out of the stands.
It wasn't the opponent.
