It was a game that began with punts on 15 of the first 17 possessions and ended with scores on nine of the last 12, that saw a quarterback complete three of his first 15 passes and win the Territorial Cup MVP, that ended as the first overtime game in the 111 year Territorial Cup history, and the first overtime victory for ASU since 1999.
“What a football game,” ASU coach Dennis Erickson said. “If you weren’t coaching in it, it would be really fun to watch.”
The four-hour spectacle had slapstick.
Sophomore middle linebacker Vontaze Burfict, one of the best in the nation at tackling and confronting officials, did both in one fell swoop for the second time in his career when he tripped and inadvertently took a line-judge to the ground, wrapping his arms around the official to brace for the fall.
Redshirt senior punter Trevor Hankins’ nearly whiffed on an eight-yard shank, only to be outdone by a seemingly impossible zero-yard punt from UA junior Alex Zendejas on the next possession.
The game saw a deflected pass from sophomore quarterback Brock Osweiler get tapped into the air as if redshirt junior right tackle Dan Knapp was setting a volleyball, and for Osweiler to attempt to catch the ball as it headed towards the ground five yards behind the line of scrimmage.
It was a contest so steeped in irony that you would have thought it unfolded in an alternate universe. A game where and when events occurred in diametric opposition to the 11-game reality that bewildered ASU and its fans so extremely that the absurd had become the expected, and the expected became a loss defined by implausible events, only for the phenomena to be flipped upside-down.
The game featured two extra points missed by the opposition after two ASU losses could be pegged to the same improbable play in nearly the same situations. The irony continued as the kicker who had them blocked, Zendejas, was the same player that won last year’s Territorial Cup with a last-second field goal.
It was as if those who witnessed the final event, the extra point, were witnessing a pole reversal. The kicked ball bouncing both off a UA lineman and junior defensive end James Brooks, and still, as if controlled by an ASU loss magnet, nearly pulled in through the uprights.
"We never quit," said Osweiler, who completed 19 of his final 34 attempts. "We played a little sloppy in the first half, but we got settled down and came out in the second half and proved to everybody that we weren't going to quit and we were going to win this football game."
It was a contest that not only produced a perfect ending for the maroon and gold, but provided a final stage for redemption.
A game where redshirt senior Thomas Weber, once the best kicker in the country and whose performance had fallen so far that his extra-point attempts could not be assumed, gave arguably the best game of his career, making five field goals in a game in which teams were never separated by more than eight points.
“It makes up for a lot,” Weber said. “You can’t live in the past. This was amazing.”
While it was a game that ASU and its fans hope to symbolize a new beginning, it produced nothing to alter the fact that the Sun Devils will likely start 2011 in the same situation they did in 2010, with a quarterback battle between Osweiler and redshirt junior Steve Threet.
Reach the reporter at nick.ruland@asu.edu
