10 best college football plays from the 2015 regular season

1. Michigan State beats Michigan (10/17)

There is absolutely no play that will match the craziness, timeliness, or sheer magnitude as the botched punt and subsequent return for a touchdown to end the rivalry game between the Michigan Wolverines and Michigan State Spartans. As soon as it happened, you knew it was going to be the most memorable and the best play of the year and that hasn’t changed because it was just that unbelievable.

Up 23-21 with 10 seconds left on the clock, all that the Wolverines had to do was get the punt off cleanly and they’d have picked up a win over their biggest in-state rivals. Instead, punter Blake O’Neill got a bad snap. The smart move would have been just to fall on the ball, but instead he tried to recover, roll out a bit, and still get the punt off. That went horribly wrong for the fighting Jim Harbaughs as a host of Spartans defender swarmed O’Neil to block the kick.

Michigan State’s Jalen Watts-Jackson picked up the ball off the ground and took it all the way to the end zone as time expired, thus giving Sparty the rivalry win. This moment was truly one of those moments that college football fans will be talking about for years to come, much like the App State upset that also happened to involved the Wolverines on the wrong side of things. However, there’s no doubt that this play hits every box on a checklist of great plays for the season and deserves to hold the top spot as the best player of the year.