College football’s 150th anniversary: The 150 best moments that stood the test of time

39. Cinderella in the Desert (2007)

Boise State became the second non-AQ team to bust the BCS when the 12-0 WAC champions earned a trip to the Fiesta Bowl. Unlike Utah against underwhelming Big East champion Pitt two years earlier, the Broncos faced an Oklahoma team whose only losses came against ranked Oregon and Texas sides. The Big 12 champions were heavily favored against the upstart Broncos.

Down 28-10 in the third quarter, the Sooners charged back. Tying the game with 1:26 remaining, Marcus Walker then stepped in front of a Jared Zabransky pass and returned it for the go-ahead score with 62 seconds left. With the giddiness of victory starting to bubble on the sideline, Oklahoma little realized what was about to transpire.

Getting the ball back again, it looked like midnight had pealed for Cinderella. Zabransky was sacked on first down, threw a dropped pass on second down, and went incomplete on third down. Facing 4th and 18 in the final seconds, Zabransky threw a 15-yard pass to Drisan James, who then lateraled to Jerard Rabb on the fly for the tying score.

Then, in overtime, the Broncos answered Oklahoma’s touchdown but opted to go right for a win instead of kicking the PAT and going to a second overtime. Zabransky executed the Statue of Liberty perfectly, faking a screen pass trips right with his right hand while handing off the hidden ball to Ian Johnson for the score. After sealing eternal fame for the Broncos, Johnson proposed to his cheerleader girlfriend to cap a perfect evening in the desert for the underdog.

38. Appalachian State Stuns the World at the Big House (2007)

Even as a two-time defending I-AA national champion, few gave Appalachian State any chance of taking down a stacked Michigan team that entered 2007 in the top five of the polls. Heading to Ann Arbor, the Mountaineers had spent all summer preparing for the outside shot that they might stun the Wolverines on their home turf in front of more than 100,000 partisan fans.

Vegas wouldn’t even offer a betting line for this game, figuring Lloyd Carr’s Wolverines would stomp their overmatched opponents. Instead, App State kept themselves in striking distance throughout the contest. A 21-point second quarter allowed the Mountaineers to take a 28-17 lead into the locker room at halftime.

Michigan roared back in the second half, as the defense shut down the I-AA champs and Mike Hart finally found his running legs. A 54-yard Hart touchdown run with fewer than five minutes remaining put the hosts up 32-31, and it looked like they would escape the upset of the ages.

Instead, Julian Rauch kicked a field goal with 26 seconds remaining to put App State ahead 34-32. Michigan needed only 20 of the remaining seconds to get into field goal range. But Corey Lynch broke through the Wolverines line, blocking Jason Gingell’s attempt to preserve the upset that kicked off one of the wildest seasons in the sport’s history.

37. Hampden Park Bloodbath (1894)

From their first encounter in 1875, matchups between blueblood institutions Harvard and Yale have always been spirited affairs that test the mettle of player and fan alike. At a time when college football was starting to confront the violence inherent in its early forms, though, the Crimson and the Bulldogs waged a battle that brought into question the value of the sport itself.

The 1894 battle between the two schools took place at Hampden Park in Springfield, Massachusetts. Roughly equidistant between the Harvard and Yale campuses, Hampden Park had served as the site of the annual rivalry game for the previous five years. After 1894, though, the memories of the place would prove too visceral to return the following year or ever again.

Players on both sides were injured throughout the contest, leading the press to report on the game as a “bloodbath”. As such, it lives in memory as an abstraction rather than a tangible memory. As Maxwell Scott said in The Man Who Shot Liberty Valence, “When the legend becomes fact, print the legend.”