Auburn Came This Close To Springing The Final Play For A Winning TD

On the final play of last night's BCS Championship game, Auburn needed to travel 83 yards. That's an almost impossible challenge, but Auburn was the team of miracles during this past regular season—so you might have given them decent odds to pull it off. And they almost did.

The hook-and-lateral play was perfectly executed up until the point that Tre Mason collected the cross-field lateral from Nick Marshall. Take a look at how many blockers Mason has in front of him:

For sure, those six blockers would all have to identify a downfield defensive counterpart and neutralize him. But at this point, it's seven-on-six, and Auburn's the one with all the forward momentum. If Mason continues down the sideline and his blockers seal off any Florida State players pursuing from across the field, he's got a solid chance of reaching the end zone and providing us the most bananas finish in college football history.

But watch the video above and you can see where things went wrong. Mason cuts back inside after two Auburn players let an FSU defender run right by them, and suddenly the game's over. One small lack of execution in an otherwise perfect play doomed the Tigers, but isn't that how football always works?

[ESPN]