10. David Wilson takes it to the house. Before there was DeSean Jackson, there was Virginia Tech's David Wilson, and his 90-yard dagger in response to a long, tying touchdown drive by Georgia Tech on Nov. 4:
Wilson's sprint capped a 21-point fourth quarter rally for Tech, pushing the Hokies over the top in the closest call of their 11-game win streak en route to the ACC title.
9. Jamie Harper lays out. Before the epic comeback in Tuscaloosa, Auburn's season was never in greater jeopardy than again Clemson on Sept. 18, after Jamie Harper got horizontal to put the visiting Tigers up 17-0 in the second quarter:
Auburn stormed back for the overtime win, of course, the first of its many harrowing moments over the season, but for once the play of the night didn't belong to the big guy wearing No. 2 in blue.
8. Andrew Luck gives Sean Cattouse a shiver. By late November, Luck had already demonstrated his prowess as a headhunter and a human cannon. Against Cal, Luck showed off his wheels in the first quarter of the Cardinal's 48-14 obliteration of their cross-bay rivals, with a special gift at the end for Golden Bear safety Sean Cattouse, who's no shrinking violet himself:
Luck isn't the most coveted passer by NFL scouts for his speed, but the 58-yard gallop in Berkeley was his third 50-yard run of the season – all coming on third down – and briefly left him with the highest yards-per-carry average in the nation.
7. Broderick Brown's sideline tip drill. With all the top-shelf playmakers Oklahoma State has populating the nation's No. 1 offense, the odds of the play of the year coming from the middling Cowboy defense are long, to say the least. But Broderick Brown and freshman Shaun Lewis set out on Nov. 27 to mock your probabilities – as well as a Oklahoma quarterback Landry Jones' pass efficiency rating and the general concept of gravity:
The gravity-defying tip drill is what we refer to in the biz as "Pulling a Dansby," although in this case, the vaunted OSU offense wasn't able to capitalize on the turnover. In fact, it wasn't able to capitalize on much of anything in the first half: Through eight possessions, the Cowboys were forced to punt four times and turned it over twice en route to a 47-41 loss that sent the Sooners on to the Big 12 Championship Game instead.
6. Alshon Jeffery beats 'Bama one-handed. If Oct. 9 was the day South Carolina quarterback Stephen Garcia earned his wings as a top-shelf SEC passer in an upset over top-ranked Alabama, he borrowed at least one of them from high-flying receiver Alshon Jeffery, owner of two impressive first-half touchdowns to extend the Gamecocks' early lead to 21-3. But it wasn't until the fourth quarter, with the Tide back within 28-21, that Jeffery briefly entered another dimension on the one-handed catch-and-run of the year against 'Bama corner Dré Kirkpatrick:
Freshman running back Marcus Lattimore took it from there, finishing off the final five yards on three consecutive runs to push Carolina's lead to 35-21, right where it would end a few minutes later to snap the Tide's 29-game regular season winning streak.
5. LaMichael James pinballs through Neyland. Tennesse charged out to a surprising 13-3 lead against Oregon on Sept. 11, and was still hanging on at 13-13 early in the third quarter, when James sent the Vols careening over the edge:
The Vols recovered roughly two months later, but neither James nor Oregon has slowed down yet.
4. Moore and Young (temporarily) save Boise State's season. For a minute, everything was back in its place. The Broncos had survived a 24-point fourth quarter rally by Nevada, salvaged their undefeated record and kept their hopes for the Rose Bowl – and possibly the BCS title game – very much alive, thanks to Titus Young's diving, 53-yard grab on a Hail Mary bomb from Kellen Moore with one second on the clock:
All the Broncos had to do was knock through the chip shot from the middle of the field and take the first plane out of Reno at 12-0, and then … well, you know the rest. If kicker Kyle Brotzman's epic choke on the subsequent field goal(s) hadn't stolen the spotlight, Idaho would have sprung to have a mural of the Moore-to-Young connection painted on the dome of the state capital.
3a. Mark Dantonio's Little Giants. Revel, peasants, in the overflowing testosterone of Michigan State's fake field goal to beat Notre Dame in overtime on Sept. 18, aptly named for the stones on coach Mark Dantonio for daring to eschew the tying field goal in favor of letting his holder put the ball in the air for the win on 4th-and-13:
That's the kind of call, if it goes the other way, that can help get you fired later on, which is part of its brilliance in the "so crazy it might actually work" sense. Twice down the stretch, Irish coach Brian Kelly elected to kick on 4th-and-1 with the score tied, punting with the ball at his own 43 with two minutes to play in regulation and taking the field goal with the ball at the MSU 16 in the first frame of overtime. With just a yard to go, neither decision would have been quite as crazy in theory as the Michigan State's tricky gambit to win. In practice, the Spartans moved to 3-0 en route to an 11-1, Big Ten championship season, and Kelly's Irish dropped the second of a three-game September slide en route to a midseason crisis. This time, the meek did not inherit the victory.
3b. LSU rolls the dice. Only an insane man, down 29-26 on the road with 35 seconds to play, would call on his kicker to run on 4th-and-3 from his opponents' 36-yard line. Fortunately, LSU's coach is the best kind of insane:
If it doesn't work – if the ball isn't guided along the 42-yard line on an invisible rope that keeps it from becoming an incomplete forward pass, if it doesn't bounce perfectly into Josh Jasper's waiting arms at full speed, if Jasper's 171-pound frame doesn't go lunging past two Gators for a first down – then half the LSU student body tries to burn Miles' house down.
But of course, it does work, because it is too insane not to work. LSU scored the winning touchdown three plays later to move to 5-0.
2. A.J. Green gets mile high. NASA can send a man to the moon, but I'm pretty sure it could never come up with an equation to replicate the combination of altitude and precision on display by A.J. Green on his first touchdown of the season at Colorado:
Georgia had a rough night in the Rockies, and a rough season, in general, even after Green's return from a four-game suspension to a 1-3 team in free-fall. But it might have been an unmitigated disaster without him.
• Dec. 8: Best Upsets
• Dec. 11: Most Overachieving Teams
• Dec. 13: Most Overachieving Players
• Dec. 15: Most Underachieving Players
• Dec. 16: Sharpest Turning Points
• Dec. 20: Most Underrated Players
• Dec. 21: Best Breakthrough Players
1. Cam Newton fulfills his athletic potential. Sports mythology, like most other kinds, doesn't do very well in the 21st Century: Too much documentation, and too many ways to disseminate it. Amazing athletic feats are instantly replayed, slowed down and rewound to the point that awe is replaced by mechanical dissection, like trying to spot exactly where the magician was hiding the rabbit. The best of those are sucked into a spin cycle of highlights that replenishes itself every few days, and the best of those ascend into the matrix that envelops sports fans in a never-ending feedback loop of the once spectacular. The hitter never misses, the ball always goes in, and whatever fleeting thrill they once provided gives way to mere respect.
In the big picture, that's a good thing: We see more great players and understand them better than ever before. At the same time, that saturation also threatens to rob us of that essential moment when we watch in disbelief as a play like Cam Newton's winding, 49-yard touchdown run against LSU on Oct. 23 unfolds in real time – and knowing full well in that moment that the few seconds you just witnessed is destined for the canon. No matter how many times you see it, the physics will never change: Burst through the line, cut right, dodge left, cut back to the middle of the field, accelerate into the end zone. He'll always keep his balance before dodging Brandon Taylor. He'll always drag Patrick Peterson across the line. You will never be surprised. But it will always be great because of that split-second that your jaw hit the floor:
Newton was already the best quarterback in the country over the first half of the season, but it was the sheer velocity of his 6-foot-5, 245-pound frame in the open field that instantly defined his run to the Heisman Trophy, and Auburn's run to 13-0. If he can do that against a defense like LSU's, there was clearly no limit for him or whatever team he happens to be playing for.
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Matt Hinton is on Twitter: Follow him @DrSaturday.
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