#5 The Kick Six
Rewatching this moment makes me ___________.
… appreciate the unique magic and mania of college football.
Every sport can deliver a thrilling ending, a shocking upset, a feat that makes participants and viewers alike gasp. But only college football can do it in a way that makes people find or lose religion, that shifts the sands of a rivalry tracing its roots across eons, that forges in its cauldron a brew of alchemical import and impact.
Here are the facts: In 2013, no. 1 Alabama faced no. 4 Auburn at Jordan-Hare Stadium in the Iron Bowl, the annual rivalry game between the Crimson Tide and Tigers. The winner of that game would make the SEC championship game, and the winner of that game would, without question, make the BCS title game. With mere seconds left, the game had lived up to the considerable hype, tied 28-28 and seemingly headed to overtime.
Here is what those facts fail to capture: Something in the fabric of the universe changed that day. Auburn was just weeks removed from another mesmerizing comeback, having toppled Georgia on a Hail Mary in the Prayer at Jordan-Hare, but it drove the beak and talons of the War Eagle spirit into the heart of all laws of probability by achieving the implausible yet again. Chris Davis did not just return Alabama’s missed game-winning kick 109 yards to win in odds-defying fashion; in doing so, he positioned his team to play for the national championship and, almost more meaningfully, ripped Alabama’s title chances out of those poll-topping hands and buried them in a shallow grave in a way that time can not erase. In a grave that surely saw the pebbles atop it dance and roll as the 87,451 fans in attendance roared and stomped so fiercely that their celebration registered on a seismic scale.
The Kick Six wasn’t just a play. It wasn’t just an ending. It was a feeling, a type of truth. And it became both a promise and a warning. It is forever embedded in the sporting vernacular, shorthand for never giving up and never getting comfortable. Until the Gatorade has flowed, fans of losing teams now delude themselves into thinking their squad can Kick Six; fans of winning teams cannot truly know a moment’s peace until time has expired and they have avoided the shame of allowing a rival to rob them of their victory, their prospects, their joy. The Kick Six is at once the product of its moment, the stew born of the particular circumstances of that 2013 season, and a timeless fable, the product of an utterly specific rivalry game on the Plains rippling across space and time.
What is the most indelible image or quote from this moment?
With apologies to Verne Lundquist, who called the game for a national audience on CBS and later branded the Kick Six “the greatest finish in any sporting event I’ve ever witnessed,” this honor goes to late Auburn announcer Rod Bramblett, who delivered one of the most memorable calls in the history of sport as he watched Davis dance along the sidelines.
Bramblett’s call captured something elemental, almost feral, about the way sports can alter our view of the possible. Sure, he had a responsibility to explain to his audience what was unfolding, to process how this stunning circumstance had come to be and what it now meant. But instead, he screamed. He hit vocal registers he may not have known himself capable of reaching. He sounded as though he might weep. As he counted down the yard markers and yelped in astonishment and proclaimed, “They’re not gonna keep ’em off the field tonight,” he could, at a certain point, turn only to the spiritual: “Holy cow!” he shouted. “Oh, my God! Auburn wins! Auburn has won the Iron Bowl! Auburn has won the Iron Bowl in the most unbelievable fashion you will ever see! I cannot believe it! 34-28! And we thought a Miracle in Jordan-Hare was amazing! Oh, my lord in heaven!”
If you had never seen a second of college football, let alone spent a second caring about Auburn, you could still listen to this and understand something core about the entire proposition of fandom. About the transcendent euphoria of knowing in real time that you had witnessed something lasting. About the lies we tell ourselves when we dare to hope and the ecstasy some of us are lucky enough to taste when our teams accomplish the divine.
