At 12:42 a.m. this past Sunday morning, I cracked open a second celebratory beer and raised it to the man whose inspired performance had made that celebration possible: T.J. Finley.
Yes, of course, Finley had little to do with Auburn’s Saturday night exorcism of 22 years’ worth of Tiger Stadium bayou voodoo. The superhero cape that evening fell on the shoulders of the man, the meme, the legend, Bo Nix, who decided to make an entire plane out of his touchdown against Texas A&M last year. You’ve watched the following a hundred times, and we all know that’s not as good as having watched it a hundred-and-one times:
What makes this play such a face-melter isn’t just the unchartable unlikelihood of its success; it’s that it comes on 4th down, deep in the second quarter, with the Tigers already down two scores in a place they haven’t won since God’s bicycle still had training wheels.