On the television screen, on screens all across the country on Thanksgiving weekend, a time when extraordinary things have happened before in college football, the long field goal attempt from Alabama’s Adam Griffith, a 57-yard field goal attempt, was coming up short.
So this was the beginning of it, the start of the greatest ending to any big game college football has ever seen, the ball falling into the arms of an Auburn kid named Chris Davis. Like the season was coming into the kid’s arms one yard from the back of the Auburn end zone.
One second on the clock.
The beginning of what was officially one second in college football that will be talked about forever. This was the Iron Bowl, No. 1 Alabama against No. 4 Auburn, at Auburn; this was unbeaten Alabama going for three straight national championships under Nick Saban. If Saban’s team gets there it goes down in history with the best in his sport’s history. Saban himself? He is already one of the best coaches, even if he wasn’t close to being that at the finish of Auburn-Alabama on Saturday.
Not now: Not when he thought he was giving his team a chance to win this game before overtime by letting Griffith, replacing the Alabama kicker who had already missed three field goal attempts, try to make a game-winning kick from Tuscaloosa. Not as cornerback Chris Davis, No. 11 for Auburn, began to run toward the left sideline and pick up speed and blockers, as a national television audience began to realize just exactly what it was seeing.
It was 28-28. So much had happened already between these two teams, including a 99-yard touchdown pass from the Alabama quarterback A.J. McCarron that had made it 28-21 for his team. But Auburn came back again, the way it had come back from 21-7 to get to within a touchdown at halftime and Nick Marshall, the Auburn quarterback, had finally tied it by pulling up before he crossed the line of scrimmage and throwing a 39-yard touchdown pass to Sammie Coates with 32 seconds left.
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The Auburn Tigers were 10-1. Alabama, of course, was 11-0 already. This wasn’t No. 1 against No. 2, but it was close enough at Jordan-Hare Stadium, a regular-season game feeling like a title game, feeling the way No. 1 versus No. 2 used to feel when it was Nebraska against Oklahoma back in 1971, another Thanksgiving weekend in college football.
And 29 years ago, on another Thanksgiving weekend, it was Doug Flutie throwing the ball as far as he could to his best friend, Gerard Phelan, and beating Miami on the last play of the game in the Orange Bowl, as famous a throw and as famous an ending as their sport had ever seen.
Only now Chris Davis, No. 11 of Alabama, had a different ending in mind. If you were watching the end of the game on television, all of a sudden you saw the field opening up for him, saw that he hadn’t stepped out of bounds when it seemed as if his own momentum might stop him before anybody from Alabama did.
You realized, maybe halfway into it, maybe a little before that, that Davis might be able to go all the way, might take the ball from what felt like one of the tunnels at Jordan-Hare Stadium into his own place in college football history.
They should have been in overtime already, Auburn and Alabama. But on what looked like the last play of regulation, T.J. Yeldon, the star Alabama running back, because there is always a star running back for Saban at Alabama, wouldn’t stop running and nobody could bring him down until he got to the Auburn 39-yard line. The whole world thinking that the clock had run out at that point, Saban saying no it hadn’t, the officials checking the replay, deciding there was still one second left. What was about to become the most unreal second — in real football time — that football had ever seen anywhere.
Already this was an improbable season for Auburn, it had beaten Georgia two weeks ago on what was called an “Immaculate Deflection,” the ball bouncing off Georgia defenders and into Ricardo Louis’ hands and Louis running the rest of the way with the touchdown that set up this Iron Bowl on Saturday.
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Saban fought for that extra second early Saturday night, fought for it and got it. But when Griffith’s kick came up a few yards short, the play suddenly became a kick return for Chris Davis. Only Saban didn’t have a kickoff team trying to catch him or stop him, he had a field goal kicker and a bunch of blockers scattered all over the field as Davis was flying down the left sideline, and the improbable became more probable a few yards at a time for coach Gus Malzahn’s Auburn Tigers.
“Never saw a game end that way,” Saban would say.
A game that really had seen so much, seen both teams make fourth-down stops in the fourth quarter, had seen that 99-yard touchdown pass from McCarron to Amari Cooper was now going to see Davis go 109 and beat what people would have called one of the great college teams of them all if Nick Saban’s team could win it again.
The last Alabama player with a shot at Davis was a kid named Cody Mandell at midfield. But he was too late, then all you saw was the back of Davis’ blue jerseys and all the blue jerseys around him, saw Davis’ teammates catch up with him finally at the back of the other team’s end zone now, Auburn 34 now, Alabama 28 in the Iron Bowl, forever.
“I was in disbelief,” the wonderful Auburn running back, Tre Davis, would say to ESPN’s Chris Fowler when it was over. “(Davis) blew right past me.”
There have always been great moments to end great college football games. Flutie to Phelan. Johnny Rodgers’ brilliant run to set up Jeff Kinney’s winning score in that ’71 Game of the Century between Nebraska and Oklahoma. Vince Young beating USC in the Rose Bowl to win the BCS championship that time.
Just never one like this, never one like Chris Davis’ 109 yards and one official second of football time early Saturday night at Auburn. Only thing missing was the Stanford band.

Actor Paul Walker — a self-styled adrenaline junkie best known for his role in “The Fast and the Furious” movies — was killed Saturday in a fiery single-car wreck in Southern California.
The 40-year-old Walker was riding in a red Porsche GT about 3:30 p.m. when the sports car flew off the road and slammed into a tree in Santa Clarita, authorities and witnesses said. The car burst into flames.
“It was engulfed in flames,” said Antonio Holmes, a friend of Walker’s who raced to the scene after hearing about the crash. “There was nothing. They were trapped.”
Holmes said he was among a group of people who showed up at the site with fire extinguishers and tried to rescue Walker and the driver. “We tried. We tried,” he told the Santa Clarita Valley Signal. “Him and his buddy, his brother in arms at heart, just decided to joyride, take a spin. Something we all do.”
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Jim Torp, who was also at the event, identified the second victim as Roger Rodas, a pro racer and father of two who owned Always Evolving Performance Motors. Torp described how Rodas’ 8-year-old son tried to save his dad.
“I ran over afterwards, I was trying to find Roger’s son,” Torp said. “I found out his son had jumped the fence and gone over, he was trying to get his dad out. Paul Walker’s best friend was trying to get Paul out of the car while it was still on fire ... he was trying to save his friend ... there was nothing he could do.”
Torp said friends of the actor and race-car driver were trying to make sense of the horrific crash and its grim parallel to Walker's movie franchise.
"It's strange," Torp said. "(Walker) made his movies. He lived his life and he died fast and furious today. He loved speed, he loved cars, and he had to die this way. He died in a very fast car with his friend."
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Coroner Ed Winters said the bodies were so badly burned they would take days to positively identify.
Walker was in Santa Clarita, about 30 miles north of Los Angeles, for a charity event to benefit his organization Reach Out Worldwide, which sends first responders to the scenes of natural disasters.
The event was held at Rodas’ Always Evolving Performance Motors, just down the street from the accident site on Rye Canyon Loop, according to the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department.
"He was a great guy. His employees loved him," friend Torp said of Rodas. "Every month Roger did a car show to help people. This was the big one for him, they were trying to help the victims in Indiana and the monsoon (in the Philippines)," Torp said.
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Responding deputies found the vehicle “engulfed in flames,” authorities said.
Firefighters extinguished the blaze — and then found the two victims in the charred wreckage. They were pronounced dead at the scene. Police said speed was a factor in the crash.
“Sadly, I must confirm that Paul did pass away this afternoon in a car accident,” said his rep, Ame Van Iden.
"All of us at Universal are heartbroken," Universal Pictures, the studio behind "The Fast the Furious" franchise, said in a statement following Walker's death.
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"Paul was truly one of the most beloved and respected members of our studio family for 14 years, and this loss is devastating to us, to everyone involved with the Fast and Furious films, and to countless fans."
In a grim twist, Walker’s death came just days after he was the victim of an online death hoax. Several celebs and journalists took to Twitter hoping the new reports were another sick joke.
His “Fast and Furious” co-stars bared their heartbreak after his death was confirmed. “Brother, I will miss you very much,” Vin Diesel wrote on Instagram. “Heaven has gained a new Angel.”
“I am so beyond heartbroken right now,” James Wan, director of “Fast & Furious 7,” wrote on Facebook.
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Walker, raised a Mormon in the Los Angeles suburb of Sunland-Tujunga, entered show business when he was just a toddler. He scored roles in popular TV shows, including “Highway to Heaven,” and “Who’s the Boss?” His film career took off after he snagged a supporting role in the 1999 hit “Varsity Blues.”
Walker leaves behind a daughter, Meadow, 15. In his last tweet, on Friday, he posted a photo of him, Diesel and co-star Tyrese Gibson. “The boys are back,” read the message hyping the release of the seventh in the “Fast and Furious” franchise. “Will you be ready?”
With Nancy Dillon and Joe Stepansky 
On a mobile device? Watch the video from the scene of the accident here.
Watch the video of the news report here.