Comments (0) Best Hero - 2006

Vince Young

There was a certain inevitability to it. All observers, whether they wore burnt orange or crimson, knew that once the Texas defense stuffed LenDale White on fourth and two at the Texas 45-yard line with two minutes left on the clock, the ball game was over and the Longhorns would seize their first national championship in 35 years. Vince Young, the Madison High School star, would find a way to erase the Trojans' five-point lead. After all, he had done something just like that the previous year in the Rose Bowl against Michigan, and in the two gigantic comebacks against Oklahoma State in 2004 and 2005, and in the Shoe at Night, where he ruined the weekends of 105,000 drunken Ohio State fans with a laser-guided pass to Limas Sweed in the front corner of the end zone late in the fourth quarter. Why would this game be any different? And even though this was the grandest stage in college football, he would go about it looking as calm and collected as a guy mowing his lawn. Sure, he needed all four downs, but on fourth and five from the Trojans' nine-yard line, he did it: He coasted past the outstretched arms of the Trojans' Frostee Rucker and into Texas immortality.