As Washington began its fourth quarter at No. 11 Oregon State ahead by a sliver at 22-17, Huskies play-by-play man Tony Castricone lent the moment a beautiful framing: 15 minutes to a chance at 11-0, 15 minutes to reserve a berth in the Pac-12 championship game, 15 minutes to preserve ironclad national-title ambition.
How does anyone, let alone a bunch of anyones under 25, remember how to function in such heaviness?
All of it quaked around the dial in the hyperventilation of November, when college football fates get cemented and when, routinely yet bizarrely, a 13-member committee sitting near the airport in the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex assesses it all to make a rankings list due for national evaluation come Tuesday night.
How will that committee factor in the nauseating injury to Florida State quarterback Jordan Travis? That leg injury in the first quarter against North Alabama, which had happened just before the car radio revved up, not only saddened Travis’s admiring teammates and the admiring crowd in Tallahassee but also sent Travis to the hospital as another jolt in his long, exemplary, six-season climb past the urge to quit and into this golden season.
“I’d rather not even talk about that right now,” Florida State running back Lawrance Toafili told reporters.
After the Seminoles slipped past North Alabama to reach 11-0 and as they head for Gainesville and their dear chum Florida next week with veteran backup Tate Rodemaker, the committee faces a decision redolent of 2014. That’s when Ohio State had lost starting quarterback Braxton Miller in the preseason and second-string quarterback J.T. Barrett in the Michigan game Nov. 29 and had to proceed with third-string Cardale Jones.
The committee nodded at Ohio State anyway after its 59-0 win over Wisconsin in the Big Ten championship game, Jones turned out to be a football comet, and the Buckeyes went all the way to the confetti rain shower.
Now, in parsing all the accomplishments and capabilities, the committee might use rationale to dock Florida State to the dreaded No. 5 — it’s a four-team playoff, arranged at last Dec. 3 — while boosting Washington to No. 4 (when it belongs actually at either No. 2 or No. 1). Florida State lost more than a quarterback with 207 completions in 324 attempts for 2,755 yards, 20 touchdowns and only two interceptions; it lost a core principle. It lost a grand concept. It lost one of the most objectively admirable players going, whereupon Travis, of course, cheered on teammates from the hospital.
“You know, it’s hard to see any player go down,” Coach Mike Norvell told reporters, “but obviously Jordan’s so important to this team, not just as a quarterback but who he is, what he stands for.” He soon said: “It was emotional. It was emotional for everybody.”
At least the value of low expectations might help out for the Florida visit and an ACC championship game tangle Dec. 2 with No. 10 Louisville, which reached a look-here 10-1 after going to Miami, trailing 28-23 after three quarters and winning, 38-31, after which cornerback Quincy Riley told reporters in Miami Gardens, Fla., “Nobody expected us to be here,” a routine statement from an athlete that, for once, came across as unarguable.
Well, Missouri (9-2) converted that fourth and 17 from its 33-yard line when Brady Cook zinged one deep down the middle to a waiting Luther Burden III for 27 yards. Missouri won, 33-31, on a 30-yard field goal with five seconds left by Harrison Mevis, that throwback to those old glory days when kickers weren’t so damned svelte and when they apparently ate some of the things we all shouldn’t eat. And Texas (10-1) scrapped through, 26-16, in Ames, Iowa, to show us something fresh and considerable: its versatility. And Kansas State (8-3) let the goal posts stay upright at Kansas with its tingling 31-27 win, keeping afloat a wish for a Big 12 title-game rematch with Texas, which it carted into overtime in Austin.
And the magic radio told of Georgia Tech players going over to greet Georgia Tech students after a 31-22 win over Syracuse brought meaningful bowl eligibility just before a visit from No. 1 Georgia, which looks like pure heaven and pure hell yet again. And in the daytime Coach Jerry Kill’s New Mexico State (9-3) had scored an upset romp its players will never forget, 31-10 at Auburn. And No. 17 Arizona (8-3), among the wonders of the season, had clobbered No. 22 Utah, 42-18, for a fifth straight impressive win. And Appalachian State, that curious collector of thrilling games, had upended unbeaten James Madison, 26-23, in overtime at the gorgeous Harrisonburg, Va., campus that had spent the Saturday with that ESPN “College GameDay” stoking.
And now Washington, one of the delights of the season, tried the fine art of hanging on — for one of the best road wins anybody has snared all year. The Huskies never scored after halftime as their 22-10 lead withered steadily. The terrific Beavers (8-3) built their drives as if beholden to their mascot, with painstaking, incremental construction. One of them, in the third quarter, took 16 plays, 78 yards and 9:56 of clock.
“That one, you see just the wear and tear in the eyes [of the defenders],” said Kalen DeBoer, the fantastic Washington coach, to reporters in Corvallis, Ore. “You know [that] in the fourth quarter, those are the things that can come back to haunt you.”
The Huskies’ defense might have heaved. The Heisman Trophy campaign of quarterback Michael Penix Jr. might have suffered after his 13 for 28 for 162 yards in the rain. But this strange game isn’t about those things in the end, and so here came the Beavers again, and here dug in the Huskies, almost visible clear from Tennessee through a magic radio under a crescent moon.
Here came the hidden plays that define a season. On first down from the Washington 15-yard line, that score still teetering at 22-17, Huskies defensive lineman Tuli Letuligasenoa stalled the Beavers’ outstanding running back, Damien Martinez, for a two-yard loss. The Huskies hurried Oregon State quarterback DJ Uiagalelei into two incompletions, with Bralen Trice notching the hurry on the third down. The Beavers had to settle for a 35-yard field goal from Atticus Sappington, one of the better kicker names ever. The score stood 22-20.
The Washington offense short-circuited again. It had run only 13 plays all second half. Here came one more Oregon State possession, budging Beaver-like up the field from the 5-yard line to the 41. The season-long dreams quivered. The Huskies tried to hang on.
Then they did, on a fourth down from the Oregon State 47, and then Penix threw a clinching 19-yard, third-down, back-shoulder pass to brilliant wide receiver Rome Odunze, and the Seattle hopes kept soaring, and a Pac-12 title-game doozy with Oregon kept looming, and Castricone finally said, after finding so many words this season, “This team is indescribable!”
Thank goodness for satellite radio. How did past generations function without it?
