For a brief moment, Michael Dyer stopped running.
Hold on.
No whistle. No ref raising his hand.So he started running again — past the tackler who thought he had him down, deep into Oregon territory. A once-in-a-lifetime run, the kind that wins championships.
Dyer’s stop-and-go maneuver set up a short field goal on the last play that sent No. 1 Auburn over the No. 2 Ducks 22-19 in the BCS title game Monday night.
“All I knew was the whistle wasn’t blowing and my coach was saying ’Go!”’ Dyer said.
With his 37-yard run, sure to be preserved in college football’s highlight reel, the freshman running back did what most fans thought was impossible — he upstaged his teammate, Heisman-winning quarterback Cam Newton.
Three plays later, Dyer ran 16 yards to push the ball to the 1 and set up Wes Byrum’s 19-yard field goal with no time left. It was his sixth career game-winning field goal — one that capped a perfect, 14-0 season, brought the title back to Auburn for the first time since 1957 and left the Southeastern Conference on top for the fifth straight year. (January 11, 2011, Page 6)
