The silent river of black streaming from Autzen Stadium looked more like the dismissal of a funeral than the ending of a football game — and that’s because to most of us, it was a funeral: The burial of a BCS Championship Game run.
It was the story of an offense that took too long to get in a rhythm, a defense that took too long to make any significant stands, and most crushingly, the field goal attempt that floated too-far left.
It will be another year without a National Championship for the Ducks and their fans, but that night we lost something even more meaningful. Oregon fans, the tens of thousands of us packed into Autzen Stadium, the 40 of us eating lukewarm pizza and screaming at a classroom projection screen, the millions of us glued to our couches across the nation, all lost the ability to say we watched one of the greatest games in Oregon football history.
It was supposed to be our night. It was supposed to be our generation’s “The Pick.”
When Oregon came back from an 18-point deficit in the 4^th quarter to cut USC’s lead down to 3, it seemed like fate was taking over. Suddenly, Oregon had some answers to Matt Barkley’s relentless assault on our backfield. Suddenly, Darron Thomas snapped out of his decision-making slump. Suddenly, Lavasier Tuinei and the rest of our receiving core were making some of the biggest plays of the season. A one-handed catch by David Paulson, a barely inbounds two-point conversion catch by Tuinei — it started to feel like it wasn’t a football game anymore. Instead, we were watching a movie about our hometown heros, where no matter how bad things got for them, they always seemed to find a way to win.
The last Trojan drive ended cinematically when running back Marc Taylor fumbled in the redzone with 2:54 left in the game. It felt like watching Rudy finally get his sack when Oregon defensive end Brandon Hanna recovered the loose ball. This was the best movie ever.
With fate on our sides, and the sports gods smiling in our presence, it only made sense that Thomas and Barner bullied USC’s defense with relative ease until they finally held their ground in field goal range. But this movie wasn’t over, of course. Our heroes had to win. They had to do it. Iowa State just upset No. 2 Oklahoma State and LSU still has a difficult game against Arkansas. As far as we were concerned, the cosmos were aligned for the Ducks to get a good chance at the BCS Championship. And they were going to earn it in dramatic fashion — you know, the way heroes do it.
But this was not a team of heroes, nor was this a movie with a predestined script. These were men playing a sport. Men who, like you and I, are at the mercy of fate and all its cruelties.
They wanted to win. But they didn’t. They did enough to win. But they didn’t. Everything was written up like a fairy tale, but in the end they fell a few feet left of the goal.
Only something as powerful as fate could’ve ruined that special moment in Oregon football history.