While you were paying attention to any one of the four high-key games Week 2 gave the college football calendar, the unexpected was happening in Ruston, Louisiana.
The 6 things to know about the 3rd-and-93 Mississippi State-Louisiana Tech fumble
It is the preeminent football play of our time.
That’s an epic 87-yard fumble that Louisiana Tech and Mississippi State combined to give the world. It was beautiful and everything great about college football. Here are the things you need to know about it.
1. It’s hard to get over the fact that the thing was indeed a real happening in a college football game.
It absolutely derailed an otherwise productive evening.
This play completely took over the college football internet for at least half an hour, despite the four huge games going on at the time. As four blockbuster games dominated eyeballs in some saner universe, our bizarre alternate universe focused on this oddity. The 87-yard fumble was the busiest post for at least two different college football outlets that I know of during, again, four simultaneous ranked-vs.-ranked games. We set the highlight to two different songs, and people started sending in requests for more, as if we were 87-yard fumble DJs. We would’ve happily kept going all night
2. It was at least four sports in one.
We counted ‘em all up. And we also gave the play the name “unholy roller.” It was baseball, two types of football and soccer at the same time.
In a perfect world, he’d use some Rawlings leather and gather the ball in and come up firing to gun some baserunner out.
This is not a perfect world.
Grabbing an oblong ball is never easy. Our Bill Connelly has a term to deal with fumble recovery statistics. It’s called fumble luck. You can be in the right position 100 times out of 100, and both Smith and Smitherman are in the right spots to bring this thing in. But that egg-shaped thing has a mind of its own sometimes whether you like it or not.
3. It looked completely hilarious on the scoreboard.
Imagine actually seeing this on a big, bold LED display.
4. It was kinda history.
This sport is over 100 years old and still finds new ways to reinvent itself.
Prior to Saturday night’s game, the most yards needed to convert a first down since 2004 was 57, when Georgia had third-and-57 against Tennessee in 2011.
And the loss of 87 yards also marked the worst negative play in the FBS since at least 2004.
“It was a strange game at times, wasn’t it,” Mississippi State coach Dan Mullen said of a contest that, in addition to an 87-yard fumble, included three blocked extra points and one blocked punt.
5. You didn’t know you needed to see it in 8-bit.
But you definitely needed to see it in 8-bit.
6. One player, safety C.J. Morgan, has been ruthlessly roasted about the play.
“Nobody initially came to block me, so when I saw the high snap, I went, ‘Oh yeah, this is my chance right here my first touchdown, here it is right there,’ ” Morgan said. “As I’m coming to the ball, I’m thinking that I really only have one chance. If I just scoop it up perfectly on this first try, then I’m gone. But if I don’t get on this first try I’m just going to keep on kicking it.”
Needless to say, Morgan did not scoop it up perfectly nor score his first touchdown. He saw the ball in front of him the whole play, but a cut block took out Morgan about 10 yards from the final recovery.
“The game was played in Ruston, and I’m from Bossier City, Louisiana, which is about 30 minutes away from there,” Morgan said. “I had a lot of friends and family, old teammates, old teachers at the game. So they were like, ‘We used to do that in high school all the time! I can’t believe you didn’t do it.’
“My teammates, my friends here (at Mississippi State) — everybody comes up to me on campus, like, ‘Wow, you can’t pick up a ball? Butterfingers.’ ”
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