The BCS era of college football ended on the night a seven-season run of SEC ownership went bust. Florida State, the team that hadn’t been tested, faced down Auburn, the team that made it to the Rose Bowl on the wings of two victories made in either heaven or Hollywood, and with 13 seconds remaining Kelvin Benjamin snatched a Jameis Winston toss from the California sky — rising above Chris Davis, the hero of the Iron Bowl — and hugged it to his chest. The Seminoles aced the only test that mattered.
It was an even greater finish than the one Vince Young of Texas authored here against USC eight years ago, and it surely wasn’t coincidence that Florida State began its final push — 80 yards away, 71 seconds to play — headed toward the end zone that saw Young scramble into history.
“I was ready,” Winston would say later. “I wanted to be in that situation because that’s what great quarterbacks do. That’s what the Tom Bradys, the Peyton Mannings, Drew Brees — that’s what they do. Any quarterback can go out there and perform when they’re up 50-0 in the second quarter. This is what you’re judged by, especially by your teammates. I’m pretty sure I got more respect from my teammates and the people around us on that last drive than I got the whole year.”
It was Winston, who started the game in horrid fashion, who steered the drive of champions, the Winston who turned 20 this very day, the Winston who was more composed and precise in the final minute than in that wretched first half. He completed six of seven passes for 77 yards on the winning drive, as cool on the day he stopped being a teenager as the crewcut Johnny Unitas was in overtime in Yankee Stadium.
And it was a team from the supposedly flimsy ACC that outfought the representative of the conference that hadn’t lost a BCS title game to anyone other than another SEC team. The Seminoles, who hadn’t trailed in the second half all season, trailed for the first 25 1/2 minutes of this one. And then, after nosing ahead, they saw Auburn do as Auburn does. Lo and behold if FSU didn’t see the Tigers’ final touchdown and trump it.
From 21-3 down, Florida State had drawn within 21-19 on Winston’s swing pass to Chad Abram with 10:55 left and was poised to go for two and the tie. But tailback Devonta Freeman, 40 yards from Abram, turned to the Auburn bench and offered a taunting gesture, for which FSU was penalized 15 yards. The Seminoles had to settle for a one-point deficit.
Auburn drove inside the FSU 10, but a Nick Marshall pass flew high on third-and-4 at the 6, prompting the field goal that made the score 24-20 with 4:42 remaining. Time enough for the Seminoles to drive the length of the field and win at the end.
Instead FSU’s Levonte Whitfield seized the kickoff and fled 100 yards in 11 seconds. The Noles had their first lead since the first quarter, but the roles had been reversed. Now Auburn would get the ball with the game in its hands, and anyone who knows anything about these Tigers knows that they’ve been uncanny at the end of games.
On cue, Marshall completed a 15-yard pass to Sammie Coates on third-and-11. On second-and-15 from the FSU 37, Tre Mason took a handoff around right end, bounced off safety Jalen Ramsey and skittered into the end zone. The Tigers were back in front. But this time Auburn scored too soon.
Over the first 25 minutes, everything snooty SEC fans believe about ACC football was on display. The sleek Seminoles were made to look feeble, and the first thought anyone had was that Florida State’s fabulous record had been achieved in a conference that saw Duke — Duke! — play for its championship. (Let’s give credit, though: The Blue Devils put up a much better early fight against Texas A&M in the Chick-fil-A Bowl than FSU did here.)
The No. 1 Noles kept getting stopped by Auburn, which spent much of the season hardly stopping anybody. The highly regarded Florida State defense got so flustered by Gus Malzahn’s offense that cornerback Lemarcus Joyner, considered FSU’s best defender, got called for unsportsmanlike conduct to override a tackle for a 3-yard loss. Before the Seminoles could finish griping, Marshall found a scandalously open Ray Melvin for a 50-yard touchdown.
That made the score 14-3. It would become 21-3 after the Tigers seized on a Winston fumble, and over those 25 minutes it could be said that Winston, whose collegiate debut was a nigh-perfect display against Pitt, had gotten it backward. He contracted the freshman jitters not in the first game of Season No. 1 but the last.
“He started holding the ball,” Auburn defensive end Dee Ford said. “He started second-guessing his decisions, and that’s exactly when I knew — at the end of the day, he’s a freshman, and tonight we kind of exposed that.”
At the end of this day, however, it was Winston and the Seminoles who were winners. They kept plugging even when nothing much was breaking their way. They hunkered down on defense, holding Auburn to 10 second-half points, and they used their immense talent to find ways to score. They outfought the Tigers in the final frantic minutes, which not even Alabama could do. Thus did the ACC champion, the representative of the so-called basketball league, become the king of college football.
About the Author
