Once again we're gobsmacked by the routine passage of time: Ten years has passed like that, and to commemorate the artificially grouped events therein, the Doc Sat team is counting down the best of 2000-09. Today's category: Best game.

Matt Hinton
 • Ohio State 31, Miami 24 (Jan. 3, 2003): It would be hard to invent a team as dominating as the Hurricanes -- defending national champions on a 34-game winning streak, overflowing with All-American and future NFL talent -- or a team that seemed to belong less in a winner-take-all championship than Ohio State: The Buckeyes had survived five of their last six regular season games by a touchdown or less and statistically looked like a team that should have been playing in the Outback Bowl rather than for No. 1 in the Fiesta against a monolitcally talented outfit that barely been tested.

The win, though, was quintessential Ohio State -- the defense held the Hurricanes' high-flying offense in check by forcing five turnovers, while the endlessly resourceful Buckeye offense converted one improbable fourth-and-long pass in overtime and drew a controversial pass interference flag on another to keep an eventual touchdown drive alive and force a second round of OT, from which it emerged triumphant as the patron saints of winning ugly.

• Arkansas 58, Ole Miss 56 (Nov. 3, 2001): One test of a great game that doesn't have especially far-reaching consequences is when you can remember almost everything about it except which team actually won. And after four and a half hours and seven excruciating overtimes in Oxford, no one here deserved the ignominy of defeat.

Of 16 total touchdowns and 114 points for the game, 12 touchdowns and 80 points came in the extra frames, which were twice extended when both teams converted two-point conversions, twice extended when both teams failed to convert two-point conversions and extended once when, somehow, neither team managed to score at all. Eli Manning set a school record with six touchdown passes, five of them in OT, and when Ole Miss tight end Doug Zeigler was stopped short of the goal line on the Rebels' two-point attempt to tie in the seventh overtime, it was like a kind of shock. Nobody seemed to see any good reason that it had to end.

Chris Brown.
 • Northwestern 54, Michigan 51 (Nov. 4, 2000): When the documentaries are made about this decade, it will be known as the age of the spread offense. And while the late nineties saw a few renegade buccaneers (including one future head pirate) experimenting with the spread, it was Northwestern's sudden resurgence in 2000 that really deserves notice as the tipping point for the spread's promulgation to every corner of the country, and the Wildcats' dramatic, 54-51 over the mighty Wolverines stands out specifically as ground zero.

The perception had been that spread schemes were the exclusive domain of pass-happy coaches, a legacy descended from the defunct (and largely discredited) run and shoot. And, sure enough, in Northwestern's upset, quarterback Zak Kustok had over 300 yards through the air. But there was another stat that made everyone take notice: Northwestern also had more than 300 yards rushing against a vaunted Michigan defense coming off back-to-back shutouts in its previous two games, led by 268 yards from Damien Anderson in a wild, back-and-forth affair that wasn't decided until the final minute. Kustok's 55 yards on 16 carries -- mostly on the innovative zone read -- also announced something new to coaches: You can run the ball from the shotgun, and with a somewhat mobile quarterback, it may even be preferable to running from under center. Randy Walker, Northwestern's coach, had installed the scheme based on visits with Clemson offensive coordinator Rich Rodriguez, and the rest was history: Less than a decade later, the zone read is at least a small part of almost every offense, even at powerhouses like Florida, Texas and, yes, Michigan.

• Texas 41, USC 38 (Jan. 4, 2006): Flash forward five years for the true arrival of the spread on possibly the most outsized stage in college football history. There aren't really adjectives that can do the '06 Rose Bowl justice: It was one of the most thrilling bits of football a major bowl game had seen in years, between two historically great teams at historically great programs, and it cemented Vince Young as one of the few truly mythical players in the amateur pantheon.

At the time the game was billed as a star-studded matchup between supremely talented, undefeated teams that routinely hung 50 points on opponents and came in loaded with top-shelf stars like Young, Michael Griffin, Matt Leinart, Reggie Bush, LenDale White, Dwayne Jarrett and dozens more who are still making a living on Sundays. But I see the legacy of the Longhorns' heart-stopping, triumphant fourth-quarter comeback as this: The pure, zone-read spread offense was completely adopted not only by the renegade, lesser talented teams as a way to compete with and confuse the big boys, but also by the big boys themselves, led by the typically conservative Longhorns. (The 2005 season also saw cloud-of-dust bastions Penn State and Ohio State begin utilizing the zone read to take advantage of their athletic QBs, and Urban Meyer's introduction of the spread at Florida.) And with Vince Young, the spread had the perfect triggerman -- he was definitely the most terrifying runner out of the gun, which helped him complete 30 of 40 passes and roll up 467 yards against a USC defense that tried to defend the whole field, and never could.

Doug Gillett
 • Boise State 43, Oklahoma 42 (Jan. 1, 2007): I count myself very fortunate to have been able to watch this one from start to finish, and what people forget in all the breathless discussion of Boise's overtime heroics is just how amazing the game was in regulation: There was the shock of the Sooners finding themselves in a 28-10 hole in the third quarter, followed by the shock of them digging themselves out of that hole to tie the game with less than a minute and a half left. Then, of course, you had Boise quarterback Jared Zabransky throwing the world's ugliest pick-six to give OU the lead, then rebounding to throw the fourth-and-long pass that was famously lateraled for the tying touchdown -- in a span of less than a minute. After all that, the fourth-down trick-play TD in overtime and the winning Statue of Liberty two-point play were almost gravy:

The upset angle obscures what an amazing game this would have been even if it hadn't involved a hopelessly outmanned WAC underdog defeating the Big 12 champion.

• Georgia 24, Auburn 21 (Nov. 16, 2002): When I die, I'm going to ask God three things: 1) The meaning of life, 2) Who really shot JFK, and 3) What Georgia offensive tackle Jon Stinchcomb said in the locker room at halftime of the 2002 Georgia-Auburn game, probably the most memorable game I've ever attended, not to mention one of the absolute coldest. From a 14-3 halftime deficit, a Georgia team with its first-ever SEC East championship on the line clawed back to within four points, and then the fourth quarter settled into perhaps the most nerve-wracking 15 minutes of football I've ever witnessed: Seven punts, one first down, a fumble and a failed fourth-down conversion by Georgia, all in Auburn territory. With a minute and a half left and everything on the line, David Greene completed the go-ahead fourth-down TD pass to Michael Johnson known to this day as the "Prayer on the Plains," a new generation's Buck-Belue-to-Lindsay-Scott, opening the door for the Bulldogs' first SEC championship in 20 years. A non-Georgia grad probably wouldn't have nearly as much reason as I do to consider this one of "the best," but I know my heart has never pounded harder and my throat has never been sorer from screaming than it was that night.

Holly Anderson
 • West Virginia 48, Oklahoma 28 (Jan. 2, 2008): It doesn't quite have the feel-good on-field marriage proposal angle of Oklahoma's horrific Fiesta Bowl ending against Boise State a year earlier, but Bill Stewart's first win as head coach at West Virginia is made all the more poignant by the briefly proud program's decline in his hands since. With architect Rich Rodriguez already bound for the head job at Michigan following the shocking home loss to Pittsburgh that cost the Mountaineers a certain bid in the BCS title game in the final hours of the regular season, the vivisection of the heavily-favored Sooners was the mountaintop for Rodriguez's handiwork at WVU, even if he wasn't on the sideline to experience it.

It's also a peak West Virginia's not likely to see again anytime soon sans Rodriguez and hall-of-fame quarterback Pat White, but at least the Mountaineers will always have Owen Schmitt's "runaway beer truck" moment and tearful post-game tribute to remember it by.

• LSU 28, Florida 24. (Oct. 6, 2007): This had all the big-game trappings -- two top-10 rivals, Saturday night in Tiger Stadium, etc. -- but is memorable mainly as the game in which right-thinking observers became convinced that LSU coach Les Miles' genius lay entirely with the whims of a chaos-peddling trickster god. There's no other explanation for the Tigers' rally from 10 points down in the second half, which required every one of four successful fourth down conversions to finish off three separate touchdown drives -- including two critical fourth-and-one plunges by running back Jacob Hester to extend an epic 60-yard, 15-play, eight-minute march that would come to define the Tigers' championship season when Hester went straight ahead for the winning touchdown with just over a minute to play.

LSU would go on to finish three other fourth-quarter comebacks and have a BCS Championship berth against Ohio State fall into its lap at the last possible second, an appropriate ending for a coach who proved against the Gators that the twenty-sided die he keeps tucked under his hat is every bit as good as some elaborate game plan.

- - -
• Previously on "Best of the Aughts": Best Upset, Best Scandal, Best Innovation, Best Villain.
• Have an offbeat category you'd like to see tackled in the series? Drop me a line: sundaymorningqb -at- yahoo, etc.