Scarbinsky

Sometimes I want to punch Scarbinsky in the mouth, but he is a good writer, good with a phrase.


Scarbinsky: Perfect ending, perfect season, perfect answer for the Auburn Tigers
Published: Tuesday, January 11, 2011, 5:05 AM
By Kevin Scarbinsky, Birmingham News




Gene Chizik, having a ball. (The Birmingham News / Hal Yeager)
GLENDALE, Ariz.

It couldn't and shouldn't have ended any other way.

Not for this senior class. Not for this football team. Not for this football program.

The Auburn Tigers overcame every flaw, every mistake, every imperfection to beat Oregon 22-19 on the game's final play to win the BCS Championship Game.

It was the perfect ending to a perfect 14-0 season.

Cam Newton, who never fumbles, fumbled at the worst possible time. It didn't matter.

Oregon, which had a terrible time finding the end zone all night against an inspired Auburn defense, found it at the perfect time after Newton's fumble and added a two-point conversion to tie with 2:33 left.

It didn't matter.

The Tigers, who had authored a record number of scoring drives this season, needed one more and got it.

A little child led them. Freshman tailback Mike Dyer's 37-yard run that flipped the field, the game and the season had to be reviewed because Dyer bounced off a would-be tackler perilously close to the earth, but no team has been reviewed with greater scrutiny this season than Auburn.

Like so many other critical calls, on and off the field, the authorities got this one right. The run stood. One more Dyer burst to the goal line set the table, and the old guys took it from there.

A fifth-year senior lost in the shuffle at quarterback, Neil Caudle took the snap and set the ball down with the surest of hands.

"That's what we wanted it to come down to," Caudle said. "It couldn't be any better than this. This is the perfect way to end it."

A fourth-year senior kicker who started strong as a freshman only to slump in the middle of his career, Wes Byrum hit it so fearless and true that it might've landed in the Grand Canyon had they opened the roof.

You could call it a chip shot, that 19-yard field goal, but there's no such thing with your school's first national championship in 53 years on the line.

"I just knew I had to knock it through for all the guys who'd been fighting the whole game," Byrum said.

Guys like Dyer, the offensive MVP, and Nick Fairley, the defensive MVP, and Mike Blanc, who turned the momentum in Auburn's favor in the second quarter when he took down LaMichael James for a safety.

Naturally, Blanc is a senior. For all the highlights provided by Newton and Fairley for 14 games - Newton's back went out Monday night; he didn't -- this senior class made this all possible.

Their perfect season was the perfect answer.

To the skeptics who said Gus Malzahn's "high school offense" would never work in the Southeastern Conference.

To the critics, many of them members of the Auburn family, who wanted to fire defensive coordinator Ted Roof last year and burn him at the stake, in spirit, at times this season.

To the doom-and-gloomers who booed AD Jay Jacobs for hiring Gene Chizik and laughed at Chizik himself.

Malzahn's offense ran more plays for more yards than Chip Kelly's flashing neon attack. Roof's defense locked down the No. 1 scoring offense in the nation and stood up with a goal-line stand. And who was that man standing on the podium under a hail of confetti, accepting the crystal football, shouting "War Eagle?"

Gene Chizik. Maybe he'll get a chance to analyze this game for ESPN next year if he doesn't bring the Tigers back.

A repeat will be next to impossible without the 24 seniors he inherited and embraced. The perfect ending to this perfect season completed a perfect circle for them. From the Swamp to the desert. From beating the defending BCS champions as freshmen to being the BCS champions for the rest of their lives.

This game ended just like that 2007 upset in Gainesville, with a Byrum field goal on the final play. Back then, he celebrated with a Gator chomp. He could've done the same to Oregon, waving a giant "O" as a taunt, but he wouldn't make a mockery of this victory.

"No need to," Byrum said. "We're the national champions. That speaks for itself."

Perfectly.