College football in November rarely disappoints

SEATTLE – In an elevator on the ground floor of Husky Stadium around 4:30 p.m. Pacific time on Saturday, five people stood around one guy's phone to follow an immeasurable drama ongoing 2,213 miles to the southeast.

There, a 21-year-old kicker stood in Clemson, S.C., amid 81,048 fans with about 162,096 lungs, all capable of enough noise to ransack anyone's nerves. But for his holder, the punter Ryan Winslow, the kicker looked lonely there, 48 unforgiving yards from the goal post. The home coach, Dabo Swinney, iced him with a timeout. The people in the elevator waited. Literally countless possibilities stood in the balance, from there to here, because the outcome there mattered here.

Well, Chris Blewitt, the Pitt senior, annihilated that kick. It tore through the top of the uprights with six seconds left as if it intended to be good from 60. It beat No. 2 Clemson 43-42. It triggered feelings from coast to coast and loosed a big roar in Husky Stadium upon announcement.

It also retold a fine old American tale. There are baseball Octobers and NFL Januarys and basketball Marches and Junes, all of them alluring, but there might be nothing wilder than a college football November.

A college football November Saturday always reserves the right to go all haywire. Just because a loss at Clemson seems wild doesn't mean unbeaten No. 4 Washington cannot spend the next three hours suddenly looking like the decided lesser of two teams against No. 20 Southern California. And just because a loss at Clemson and a loss at Washington seem to concoct enough wildness for one date doesn't mean you can't get to evening and see No. 3 Michigan, its own field-goal defense out on a field, lining up, straining and hoping.

Not since Oct. 19, 1985, had teams Nos. 2, 3 and 4 lost in the same college football weekend. On that day, No. 2 Michigan lost 12-10 at No. 1 Iowa, on a closing 29-yard field goal by Rob Houghtlin, after which the Michigan quarterback said, "It felt like someone reached in and pulled everything out."

Now, 31 years and one month later, that quarterback, Jim Harbaugh, coached Michigan in that same Iowa City, with his team the only remaining unbeaten Power Five team besides the fast, giant ship of No. 1 Alabama. That distinction would last only seconds longer. In a taut game that posted bruising scores such as 10-2 and 11-10, Harbaugh's offense had squeezed out only 2 yards on its final possession, bringing its total to a piddling 201, and it had punted and committed a facemask penalty, and Iowa exploded for a 21-yard drive to arrange a field goal.

With some November Saturdays, there's barely any room even for an oddity like that, barely any room to cram in that No. 9 Auburn saw its hot streak burned to rubble with merely 164 total yards in a puzzling 13-7 loss at Georgia, or that even Mount Union, the Ohio school with the 19 Division III titles, can see visiting John Carroll end its regular-season winning streak, which stood at a robust 112.

The plot of Pitt-Clemson alone could fill, and then fog, a brain. Deshaun Watson, Clemson's beloved and masterful quarterback, passed for an Atlantic Coast Conference-record 580 yards, and lost somehow. He lost somehow even after having his team at the Pitt 3-yard line with a 42-34 lead and but six minutes left. He lost partly because, right there, he threw a you're-kidding interception, which Saleem Brightwell returned 70 yards, to set up James Conner's 20-yard touchdown run, of which Conner said, "I really just blacked out and the next thing I knew it was a touchdown."

Pitt then needed a defense that yielded 630 total yards to stop a fourth-and-1, which it did. Soon came Blewitt, who wound up conjuring Michael Geiger, the Michigan State kicker who silenced most of 108,975 at Ohio State last — yeah — November, then roamed the field with his arm in some unhinged celebration.

Geiger's 41-yard kick altered the national landscape last November; Blewitt's 48-yard kick altered the national landscape this November.