Vanderbilt loses to Texas after onside kick recovery attempt trickles out of bounds
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Vanderbilt was on the brink of completing one of the most miraculous comebacks in college football history, and considering the stakes on Saturday in Austin, the Commodores’ 4th-quarter flurry was going to go down in history.
But all history will take from Vanderbilt‘s 34-31 loss at Texas was that Arch Manning put on a show for the 20th-ranked Longhorns and Diego Pavia arrived to the party a little too late to pull off the ultimate comeback for the 9th-ranked Commodores. After Vandy rolled up 21 points in the final period to turn a 34-10 laugher into a 34-31 battle, all the Commodores needed was to recover an onside kick, which was all they could have asked for.
That onside kick was so close to being successful, too, because Texas freshman wideout Parker Livingstone misplayed the ball, and then chaos ensued. Had Livingstone corralled the ball as he easily could have, none of the chaos would have happened, but he didn’t, so there was chaos. The ball kept eluding every Vandy player who desperately tried to get it, and then when 1 Commodore player looked to be close to snatching it, it squirted out of bounds, and Texas was able to take over and run out the clock.
The crowd in Austin, which had just been chanting “overrated” to Pavia and Vandy when it was a blowout early in the quarter, was breathless and Texas survived, 34-31.
Here is the video of 1 of the most dramatic onside kicks you’ll ever see:
Cory Nightingale, a former sportswriter and sports editor at the Miami Herald and Palm Beach Post, is a South Florida-based freelance writer who covers Alabama for SaturdayDownSouth.com.
