Is it just me or did Cam Newton look like he was upset last night even though they just won the National Championship. Was it because he didn't play very well, or because he knows that this championshionship will be taken away from his teammates sooner or later? I hope not, but I have a feeling a lot more will surface as time goes on now. I really hope not just for the fact that Auburn won the game and Newtons teammates won the game for him. I hope I am wrong, but something just did not seem right about his demeanor.
Auburn claims SEC's fifth straight national title by dropping Oregon on late field goal
GLENDALE, AZ - JANUARY 10: A grounds crew member dries the logo on the field at the Tostitos BCS National...
It was over when... Auburn kicker Wes Byrum split the uprights on a 19-yard field goal with no time remaining on the clock.
Gameball goes to... Cam Newton. The Tigers QB did it all, passing for 265 yards and two scores and adding 65 yards on the ground.
Stat of the game... 81. After averaging 304 yards per game on the ground, Oregon was held to 81 yards by the Auburn defense.
Complete Bowl Overview
Team Stat Comparison
Auburn Oregon
1st Downs 28 23
Total Yards 519 449
Passing 265 374
Rushing 254 75
Penalties 5-47 6-37
3rd Down Conversions 9-17 5-15
4th Down Conversions 0-1 2-3
Turnovers 2 2
Possession 32:57 27:03
Passing Leaders
Auburn C/ATT YDS AVG TD INT
Newton 20/34 265 7.8 2 1
Oregon C/ATT YDS AVG TD INT
Thomas 27/40 363 9.1 2 2
Rushing Leaders
Auburn CAR YDS AVG TD LG
Dyer 22 143 6.5 0 37
Newton 22 64 2.9 0 18
Oregon CAR YDS AVG TD LG
James 13 49 3.8 0 14
Barner 11 32 2.9 0 9
Receiving Leaders
Auburn REC YDS AVG TD LG
Blake 4 54 13.5 1 30
Adams 4 54 13.5 0 22
Oregon REC YDS AVG TD LG
Maehl 9 133 14.8 0 81
NEXT-LEVEL: Auburn averaged over 5 yards per rush on Monday night and pounded Oregon's defense on the ground. This success running the ball set Cam Newton up to beat Oregon with play-action fakes.
Auburn was able to stifle Oregon's ground game in the National Championship game.
1st time all season Oregon has failed to score in the 3rd quarter 2nd time this season Oregon was shut out in 2 quarters of a game (1st and 4th vs CAL)
The team with the halftime lead is 11-0 in BCS title games (Oklahoma-Florida was tied at 7)
Auburn was 5 of 7 this season on 4th down before that play (71.4 pct was 10th in the nation)
From Elias: Darron Thomas' 81-yard completion to Jeff Maehl is the longest play from scrimmage in a Championship game and good for the 2nd longest play in BCS history. Of the 7 longest plays in BCS history, Maehl's catch was the only play not resulting in a TD.
LaMichael James: 2nd TD reception of season (vs Washington State was other); has 21 rushing TD
Kodi Burns: 1st TD reception of season (has a TD pass and TD run)
2nd game of Thomas' career with 2 Int (vs Stanford this year) 13 combined Int from Newton and Thomas this season: 3 in the first 9 minutes of tonight's game
Oregon had 17 3 and outs all season, 3rd best in the nation. They went 3 and out on the first drive
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 Tostitos BCS National Championship Game Monday night.
After carrying Auburn all season, Cam Newton wasn't about to let back pain get him down, writes Michael Wilbon. Story
Monday's BCS title game was like the season it followed: A game of inches, missed cinches and ethical flinches, writes Pat Forde. Story
To truly understand what Monday's win means to Auburn, consider the Tigers' five decades' worth of near-misses, shared titles and close calls, writes Ivan Maisel. Story
The finish was fast and furious, but the BCS title game could have been so much more if the teams hadn't waited so long to play, writes Mark Schlabach. Story
Surprisingly, defense ruled the night, and Auburn made more plays on that side of the ball than Oregon, Chris Low writes. Blog
In the end, Oregon's offense got whipped up front by Auburn's defense, Ted Miller writes. Blog
"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 -- the one that capped off 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.
"Fifty-three years, baby!" coach Gene Chizik said to the cheering crowd. "This is for you. War Eagle!"
A few hours after the game, Auburn won the Associated Press national title as well, earning 56 of the 59 first-place votes. TCU was second, and Oregon came in third.
Dyer was the star of a classic sequence that closed out a wild finish -- five crazy minutes of football that made up for the first 55, which were more of a bruising battle than the offensive masterpiece everyone had predicted.
The craziness began when Casey Matthews, son of the 1980s NFL linebacker Clay, knocked the ball from Newton's hands while he was trying to ice a 19-11 lead.
Oregon's offense, shut down by Nick Fairley & Co. for most of the night, moved 45 yards over the next 2:17 and Darron Thomas threw a shovel pass to LaMichael James for a touchdown. Thomas hit Jeff Maehl for the tying 2-point conversion with 2:33 left and the game was down to the last possession.
And that possession will be remembered for one incredible play.
Dyer, who chose jersey No. 5 because that's how old his brother was when their father died in a car accident nearly two decades ago, took the handoff from Newton and ran off right tackle for what looked like a 6- or 7-yard gain. Nothing routine about this one, though. He wasn't sure his knee hit the ground, so, urged by his coaches on the sideline, he popped up and kept going. Almost everyone on the field had stopped playing, but the referee never blew the play dead. Dyer made it to the Oregon 23. An official's review ensued and the replay showed that, indeed, his knee had never touched the turf.
"Really, it was going through my mind to get the first down, hold onto the ball," Dyer said. "And the time being tackled, my knee wasn't down ... I didn't hear a whistle, not yet, so I was kind of, like, looking, like, what's going on?"
In a statement released after the game, Big Ten referee Bill LeMonnier said he was confident of the call: "The ruling on the field was there was nothing other than the foot that touched the ground," he explained.
Eddie Pleasant, the Oregon defensive back who almost made the tackle, was as shocked as anyone.
"It hurts, you know," he said. "It's not like he broke free and did some spectacular things. He was tackled. Everybody on the side of the defense stopped. He stopped and the coach told him to keep running and he ran. It's not like it was a blown assignment. It's not like he busted a 50-yard run down the middle. It was just a crazy play."
Dyer finished with 143 yards and was chosen Offensive Player of the Game -- no small feat considering he had Newton playing well on the same offense.
Newton threw for 265 yards and two touchdowns and ran for 64 yards, most in short, punishing bites. He wrenched his back and had to go to the trainer after the game. All in a night's work: "I'm OK. It was worth it," he said.
Newton received X-rays on his back following the game, ESPN's Tom Rinaldi reported.
It was a good performance, but not spectacular -- par for the course in a game that was projected as a possible 60-55 thriller by South Carolina coach Steve Spurrier and a 74-point touchdown-fest by the oddsmakers who set the over-under.
Wearing white jerseys with gray numbers, green pants and DayGlo shoes and socks, the Ducks got only 49 yards rushing from James. An offense that had been held under 37 points only once all year managed just the two touchdowns. The last one came on a simple shovel pass from Thomas, who finished with 363 yards -- 81 of which came on a long pass to Maehl that set up the first touchdown.
Oregon didn't come close to its nation-leading 49-point average and the fast-paced offense that turned most opponents into mush in the second half couldn't wear down Auburn.
The Ducks finished 12-1, three points shy of their first national title, but not making apologies for the effort they gave in the desert.
"When it comes down to a field goal at the last second, you can always point to play here, a play there, but it really doesn't do much for you," Oregon coach Chip Kelly said. "We're a forward-thinking operation, and we'll learn from this thing and move forward."
Fairley, Auburn's 298-pound defensive tackle, had the Ducks moving backward much of the night. He lived up to his reputation as a game-changer for better, with three tackles for loss, including a sack -- and for worse, when he got a 15-yard penalty for shoving James' face into the turf after the whistle.
Newton was a game-changer, as always, helping Auburn to its ninth comeback win of this improbable season. He has now won the national title three straight years -- in 2008 as a backup to Tim Tebow at Florida, last year in junior college at Blinn and now with the Tigers.
If he goes pro -- as some people expect -- this will mark the end of a tumultuous stay at Auburn, shadowed by an NCAA investigation into his failed recruitment by Mississippi State. The governing body cleared him to play before the SEC championship but said his father, Cecil, solicited money from the Bulldogs.
"Anything is possible," Newton said. "I guarantee, five or six months ago, that no one would bet their last dollar that Auburn would win the national championship. And now we're standing here."
Standing with a crystal football, the biggest jewel in a bowl season that, at times, felt never-ending, beginning on Dec. 18 with the BYU-UTEP game and wrapping up in Arizona with a most improbable finish.
The SEC improved to 7-0 in BCS title games. Four different teams from the conference have won it in this latest five-year run.
LSU. Florida twice. Alabama.
And now, Auburn, the school that has loads of tradition -- the Tiger Walk, the War Eagle yell and a case full of Heisman and other big-time individual trophies -- but not nearly as many titles to go with it. Bad luck in the polls doomed their one-loss season in 1983, probation kept them from capitalizing on a perfect record in 1993 and the vagaries of the BCS left them on the outside in 2004, maybe the most painful of all the snubs.
So, really, this one is for all the Bos and Beasleys and Terrys and Tracys in the Auburn family who came close but couldn't close the deal. And it fashions a nice symmetry with that team up the road -- the Crimson Tide -- which took home the Heisman and the same crystal championship trophy one short year ago.
Tide fans, of course, will remind you that it still has five more AP titles than the Tigers. But this celebration is going on at Toomer's Corner in Auburn, where the traditional toilet-papering of the drugstore and the rest of the street was going on in full force in the bitter cold as Monday night turned into Tuesday morning.
"Winning a championship for the Auburn family, I can't really describe it right now," Chizik said. "To try would probably cheapen it."
At Auburn, the words "War Eagle" would almost surely suffice.
Ohio State center Michael Brewster will return to the Buckeyes for his senior season.
Brewster, a three-year starter and a first-team All-Big Ten selection this season, told The Columbus Dispatch on Monday that he won't enter the NFL draft in April.
"This was really my first season understanding how to play center," he told the newspaper. "I made a lot of progress, and I think I can make that much more progress with another year at Ohio State. Then I think I will be really ready for the NFL. I think it will make me that much more confident about making the step to the next level."
Brewster earned first-team All-America honors from the Football Writers Association of America and would have been projected as one of the top centers in the draft had he decided to forgo his senior season.
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