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It was too much to hope that Staubach could rally the Middies now. Time was against him: the clock showed only 2 min. 5 sec., and Navy was 60 yds. away from pay dirt. The cards were stacked. But once again, Staubach began to work his magnificent magic. He scampered around right end for 16 yds. He passed for 14 more. He passed again for 12. He ran the middle for 15. And finally, with just 2 sec. left, he dropped back and fired one last pass to Halfback Ed Orr in the end zone. The gun went off—and the ball skidded off Orr's fingertips. For the first time this year, Navy was defeated. Quarterback Staubach walked off the field weeping.
That is what U.S. fans are learning to expect from the colleges: rootin', tootin', wide-open, score-a-million, hell-for-leather football. The season is only a month old. But it might have been New Year's Day and Bowl time last weekend for all the thunderous collisions among titans, the staggering upsets, and impossible heroics. In the same Dallas Cotton Bowl where Navy's Staubach left everyone limp the night before, another 75,000 fans almost expired from excitement the next afternoon when No. 2-ranked Texas crushed No. 1-ranked Oklahoma, 28-7. In South Bend, a crowd of 59,000 watched happily as Southern California, the preseason pick for national champion, went down to its second defeat, 17-14, at the hands of an inspired Notre Dame team that had lost its first two games. At University Park, Pa., underdog (by 12½ points) Army dumped Penn State for the third year in a row, 10-7, and out in Seattle, winless (0-3) Washington worked off its frustration on undefeated (3-0) Oregon State, 34-7.
The winners snake-danced around U.S. college towns all through the night. And even the losers—for once—could take comfort in how the game was played. For in 1963 it is played by brilliant quarterbacks who spin and dance and fill the air with leather. 150mething Borrowed. College football has neither the studied grace nor the unbridled violence of the pro game. Its quarterback stars are not polished professionals who read the Wall Street Journal, belong to the P.T.A., and get birthday cards from their insurance agents. Their game is still a game. They make mistakes, and if they ever do get to be pros, most of them will have to take Football I all over again. But the colleges have borrowed one thing from the pros—daring—and at its pink-cheeked, earnest, illogical best, college football is at least as interesting as a 10-7 championship struggle between the New York Giants and the Green Bay Packers.