After Midnight

With East Coast insomniacs in mind, college football produced yet another wild finish to the last game on the schedule and for the second straight week the game involved the Washington Huskies. One week after stunning Arizona with a fluky, late INT TD RETURN, Washington made the mistake of playing for OT deep in their own territory in their game against Arizona State. This is the Pac 10 and it is a late game, so coach Steve Sarkisian should have known better. For one thing he needed to either play for the extra session or go for it. By doing both—the Huskies ran twice to face a 3rd-and-1 and then had an incompletion on a long pass—he hoped to waste clock that ASU could use and maybe get lucky himself. But the net result was a punt that set up ASU at midfield with enough time for a desperation pass. Sun Devils QB Danny Sullivan (21-35/263y)—who can drop his new first name “embattled”—dropped back to throw and must have not believed his eyes ("Oh my God, he is that wide open," recollected Sullivan after the game). There was WR Chris McGaha, the active conference leader in career receptions and yards, wide open as he raced down the middle of the field to the EZ. Sullivan threw what became his longest career completion to date as McGaha (catch pictured above) cradled the ball deep in Washington territory and then trotted into the EZ with five seconds left. McGaha had missed practice all week with an illness and only made this one catch. It was memorable. So too the last game of another crazy week in college football.