STANFORD — “It’s never about the last 30 seconds,” said Notre Dame coach Brian Kelly.
Uh, sorry, coach. This game was about the last 30 seconds.
Stanford trailed on the scoreboard, 36-35. Notre Dame had just scored a touchdown, kicked an extra point. Stanford received the kickoff. Thirty seconds left on the clock. And then, after the kickoff return to the Stanford 27-yard line, just 25 seconds left. Kevin Hogan, the Cardinal quarterback, trotted onto the field with his offensive unit.
“We put it in his hands,” said Hogan’s head coach, David Shaw.
Hogan’s hands were not shaking one bit. If you were selecting one pair of hands to lead a desperation drive in the season’s most exciting and tense game, you would have a hard time finding better hands than those of a fifth-year senior quarterback in his final regular season game.
“I challenge anybody to find a better two-minute quarterback in the nation than what Kevin has done this year,” said Shaw, later noting: “We weren’t trying to score a touchdown, we were just trying to get in field goal range.”
There was so much overflowing drama on the field at Stanford Stadium on Saturday night, somebody could write a movie about it and spin off three sequels. The two teams had slashed and passed and chunked and speed-rushed at each other all afternoon into the cool evening. Notre Dame desperately needed a victory to remain in the hunt for the four-team College Football Playoff. Stanford was trying to keep its own argument alive for the playoff as it headed toward next week’s Pac-12 championship game. Stanford running back Christian McCaffrey was making a case for a Heisman Trophy. Hogan was facing the favorite team from his childhood, Notre Dame.
And over on the Stanford sideline, as Hogan lined up for that first snap after the kickoff, a former walk-on place-kicker named Conrad Ukropina from Pasadena (could there be a more perfect name for a Stanford kicker?) kept his leg limber.
The first-down play could not have gone much worse. Notre Dame’s defenders dissolved the pocket around Hogan. He lurched ahead for a single yard before being tackled. But wait. There was a face-mask penalty against the Irish. The ball was moved to the Stanford 43-yard line. First down again. Twenty seconds left.
“It’s just the best, to be in that situation,” Hogan said later. “To have the opportunity to go down and finish the game with the ball on our hands.”
Not easily finished. First, Hogan threw an incompletion to the sideline. Fifteen seconds left. It was time to go to the well. Hogan looked for his fellow fifth-year senior, reliable wide receiver Devon Cajuste, over the middle. Hogan looked off the safety to create room for Cajuste. Then looked back.
“I threw it before he even broke,” Hogan said. “I knew where he was going to be.”
The ball was delivered on a line, 22 yards downfield. Cajuste grabbed it and turned upfield before being tackled at the Notre Dame 30-yard line. Ten seconds left. Timeout.
Shaw had decided that if the ball was inside the 30, that was close enough for his kicker, Ukropina. So, the next play was a handoff to McCaffrey. He ran two yards and then fell down to center the ball between the hash marks at the Notre Dame 28-yard line. Six seconds left. On came Ukropina. Notre Dame took a time out to freeze him.
“I had no doubt he was going to make it,” Hogan said. “He did it all summer. We put him in all kinds of crazy pressure situations from all over the field. If he can do it with us huddled around him, screaming crazy things at him, then he can go out and win the game against Notre Dame. He has ice in his veins.”
In fact, as Ukropina waited through the timeout, Stanford players on the team bench were already ecstatic.
“The guys were already jumping up and down,” Shaw confirmed. “I wasn’t ready to celebrate just yet, personally.”
Six seconds later, after the ball had soared easily through the uprights — Stanford 38, Notre Dame 36 — the celebration began. Students poured onto the field and surrounded Ukropina and other players. It was your classic cinematic college football scene. Can’t wait for the sequel. That could be at Levi’s Stadium next week in the conference championship game against USC, or in a bowl game, or if enough wild stuff happens, maybe even in that four-team playoff.
Heck, at this point, Stanford is sort of carrying the Pac-12 conference on its back in terms of any national championship hopes and national reputation. Don’t run that notion by Shaw, however.
“We represent Stanford,” he said. “We’re not carrying anybody. We don’t worry about the other teams in our conference. We don’t worry about what people say about us nationally. We go out and play the best football we can. We’re 10-2 with a really tough schedule. We’re 8-1 in the deepest conference in America. We have nothing to prove to anybody … What the national chatter is, that’s not up to me. That ain’t up to us.”
“Just came up a little short,” said Notre Dame’s Kelly, who was actually a very classy and gracious loser.
Even if he was still wrong about the last 30 seconds.
Read Mark Purdy’s blog at blogs.mercurynews.com/purdy.
