People and Pop Culture
Closing Shot: Taking it to the house
Five years ago, Auburn’s “Kick Six” provided yet another highlight moment to college football’s rivalry week. CBS Sports’ Gary Danielson recalls the stunning ending and how such games put football passions on full display.
Auburn’s Chris Davis returns a field-goal attempt to score the winning touchdown over Alabama in the 2013 Iron Bowl.AP Images
For more than a minute, CBS Sports analyst Gary Danielson sat in silence, contemplating what he had just witnessed. Auburn’s Chris Davis had just returned a missed field-goal attempt by Alabama 109 yards for the stunning game-winning touchdown in the 2013 Iron Bowl. Throughout the chaotic final seconds and Auburn’s victory celebration, Danielson kept telling himself to just let the scene play out. Don’t spoil it by talking.
“The hardest thing for me was to not say a word, not to say ‘Oh, my gosh,’ not to get carried away with all of the emotions,” said Danielson, the veteran broadcaster who has covered the SEC for CBS since 2006 and was working the Iron Bowl with play-by-play man Verne Lundquist. “It was the most famous thing I’ve never said. I was literally holding my mouth shut. I’m kind of a free-lance person, but at that moment I needed to shut up.”
Once Davis crossed the goal line, giving the Tigers a most-improbable 34-28 win over the previously undefeated Crimson Tide, Lundquist shouted out, “No flags.”
“Then he looked at all of us in the booth and we all nodded, ‘No flags, no flags,’” Danielson said.
The 2013 Iron Bowl will forever serve as a reminder that anything is possible during college football’s rivalry week. And few broadcasters have seen more rivalry games than Danielson.
The former Purdue quarterback, who called games for ABC/ESPN before joining CBS, has been the analyst on a dozen Alabama-Auburn games, a handful of Michigan-Ohio State games, four Texas-Oklahoma games, two UCLA-USC games and “more Army-Navy games than anybody alive,” he said.
What will always separate the rivalry games from all the rest is the sheer emotion that accompanies each win or loss. Not every athlete is fortunate enough to have the Chris Davis experience.
Danielson said he will forever be touched by the memory of Army quarterback Trent Steelman crying inconsolably after a fumbled handoff cost Army, in the throes of a 10-game losing streak to Navy, a shot at a last-minute victory.
There’s also a bigger picture with rivalry games. It’s how coaches, players and programs are judged. Michigan coach Jim Harbaugh isn’t just 37-12 overall, he’s 0-3 against Ohio State.
Alabama coach Nick Saban second-guessed everything from his playing style to his recruiting after losing the Iron Bowl five years ago.
Auburn’s dual-threat quarterback, Nick Marshall, riddled the Tide’s defense with run-pass options. Alabama, meanwhile, was still playing its pro-style offense with the traditional dropback quarterback.
“That’s the game Nick Saban points to,” Danielson said. “Nick thought, ‘If I can’t defend it, they can’t defend me doing it.’ It’s why he changed his recruiting. It’s why he went after Tua [Tagovailoa],” Alabama’s current dual-threat quarterback who has the Tide ranked first nationally heading into this year’s rivalry week.
