King Kaufman's Sports Daily

Fifteen laterals and the truth: College football's play of the century (so far). Plus: The World Series D.H. rule.

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Oct. 31, 2007 | If you haven't seen it by now, here's a link to the craziest college football play of the year so far. Oh, heck, of the century. Trinity University lateraled 15 times on the last play of the game to score a touchdown and beat Millsaps College 28-24.

Favre to Jennings in overtime is child's play compared with this.

Trinity is in San Antonio, Millsaps in Jackson, Miss., where the game took place. Both teams are still in the hunt for the Southern Collegiate Athletic Conference championship and an automatic bid to the Division III playoffs, with Millsaps leading by a half-game. DePauw is an additional half-game back, just in case you're really getting interested in the SCAC here.

Watch the play and try to imagine it happening in the NFL or even Division I with no penalty flags being thrown. The ball was in play for 60 seconds. An NFL official would have thrown a flag on general principle. "There must have been a block in the back somewhere in there."

To be fair, and I think I speak for all Millsaps Majors fans here, there must have been.

The broadcast that everyone's watching online came from the Trinity athletics Web site that was webcasting the game. Trinity sophomore Jonathan Wiener did a great job with the play-by-play, staying relatively composed and describing the action well as it happened.

I'd have paid good money to hear Gus Johnson of CBS make that call, but I don't know that any network's best announcers would have done a better job on it, and most wouldn't have done as well.

Wiener's partner, a grad student and former Trinity player named Justin Thompson, suggested the lateral strategy just before the snap. Nice work.

Of course the play is reminiscent of "The Play," the -- seems so puny now -- five-lateral kickoff return for a touchdown by California to beat Stanford in 1982. Here was the wrap-up of Cal announcer Joe Starkey's call: "The most amazing, sensational, dramatic, heart-rending, exciting, thrilling finish in the history of college football, California has won the Big Game!"

Wiener gave it a little more of a soft sell, but his wrap-up echoed Starkey's: "That might be the most sensational, incredible ending in all of Division III! Oh my gosh, I do not believe it! This football game is over. That was one of the most miraculous plays in all of college football!"

Next page: Does the D.H. rule give the American League an advantage in the World Series?