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A Pick and a Punch: Late-Game Spontaneity Won on Two Successive Days in College Football

Football is the most planning-intensive of sports. There are fat playbooks and long hours of film study and detail-obsessed practices that lead to literal scripts of how coaches envision a game playing out. And then they kick off and a lot of it goes straight into the dumpster.

That’s one of the game’s great beauties. Prepare for everything, then react on the fly when the preparation no longer applies. Heroism can arrive suddenly and unexpectedly. Spontaneity can still win the day.

Across the landscape of a typically unruly college football weekend, spontaneity won two successive days, Sept.