Weekend Blogging #1 - McCallie/Baylor

There are good weekends and then are weekends like this past one. It isn't just good. It isn't even great. It goes beyond great into some netherworld between perfect and pinch-myself. The kind of weekend that leaves a smile on your face for an entire week.

Let's start from the beginning:

Friday night - McCallie 20 Baylor 17 in overtime.

Absolutely unbelievable game. There was new bitterness added to this rivalry with Baylor's decision to host the game, but if it takes playing on campus to deliver games this good, they can play at Baylor every year. The game went back and forth for three quarters with McCallie up 17-14. The Blue Tornado scored to make the game 24-14, but the touchdown was called back because of a holding penalty. Momentum shift towards Baylor, but McCallie was still in scoring position. Coach Rick Whitt made an odd decision to go for it on 4th and 8 from the 16 instead of adding the more points. Baylor shut down the play - momentum now belongs to Baylor.

Baylor took that momentum and drove for what looked to be a winning score, but McCallie's secondary came up big with an interception of Tyler Massey at the goal line. Unfortunately, the play resulted with McCallie having the ball on its own 1 instead of being a touchback with the ball at the 20. The McCallie offense was forced to run the ball up the gut three times to avoid a possible safety.

I thought McCallie might elect to take a safety here and kickoff from the 20, but instead they punted from their own end zone, giving Baylor the ball inside the McCallie 40 with under 2:00 to go. Baylor was clicking on all cylinders as it drove towards the McCallie end zone. A rushing play put Baylor inside the 1 with about 40 seconds left, but McCallie somehow stuffed a quarterback sneak, forcing Baylor to use its final timeout.

Out of the timeout, Baylor decided to try the quarterback sneak a second time and, incredibly, McCallie stuffed it again. Now Baylor had no timeouts as the clock ran under 10 seconds to play. The Red Raiders rushed their field goal unit onto the field and managed to get the kick off before the end of regulation, tying the game. The referees chose to ignore that fact that Baylor's offense had not gotten off the field when the ball was snapped. Oh, well - 17-17 at the end of regulation.

Baylor got the ball first and still could not find its way into the end zone. This time, however, its field goal was no good. All McCallie needed to do now was score to win the game. On 3rd down, Whitt decided to kick the ball. The kick was no good, but wait - Baylor called a timeout right before the kick, taking a play out of Mike Shanahan, Lane Kiffin and Urban Meyer's playbook. Sadly for Baylor, however, is that McCallie's kicker missed the kick.

The second time was the charm as Matt Higgins nailed the kick to give McCallie its 10th straight victory over Baylor. It was as exciting a finish as I can ever remember seeing in high school football. McCallie's goal line stand will go down into Blue Tornado lore as one of the greatest moments in the history of the program. Two straight sneaks from inside the 1 - nothing. Wow.

The Greatest McCallie/Baylor Game used to be considered the 1995 game at Baylor when the Blue Tornado drove the field to score on the final possession of the game and capture a 14-10 victory. The game was my senior year at McCallie - a source of pride for my entire graduating class.

Class of 2008 - the distinction of Greatest McCallie/Baylor Game has been passed. Friday night's contest was a classic game with no losers on either side.

Except for the Baylor side.