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The Greatest College Football Performance of All Time

One individual effort stands out from among the rest, but does it reach the same level Shohei Ohtani did in Game 4 of the NLCS? Let’s take a look.

Pat Forde

Vince Young put forth the single greatest individual effort in college football to take down No. 1 USC in the 2005 national championship game.
Vince Young put forth the single greatest individual effort in college football to take down No. 1 USC in the 2005 national championship game. / Robert Beck/Sports Illustrated
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This post is part of a larger list looking at some of the top individual performances in all of sports history. Check out the full list here.

When two-way great Shohei Ohtani turned his slugging slump into the greatest game in baseball history in Game 4 of the National League Championship Series, it started a discussion in the Sports Illustrated newsroom: What are some of the other top individual performances in sports? And how do they compare to Ohtani’s 10 strikeouts and three home runs?

Here is our pick for college football.

Texas quarterback Vince Young points before a snap during the national championship game against USC.
Young racked up 467 yards of offense and three scores to power the Longhorns back from a 12-point deficit in the final six minutes. / Sports Illustrated

Vince Young’s 2005 national title game

The greatest college football game of the 21st century was decided by the greatest individual effort of any century, when Texas quarterback Vince Young simply said: I’m taking over.

The broad strokes: Young led Texas to the 2005 national championship with a thrilling victory over USC, 41–38, on Jan. 4, 2006. He threw for 267 yards that night in the Rose Bowl and ran for another 200 and three touchdowns. Young was the best player on the field, and he was sharing it with Heisman Trophy winners Reggie Bush and Matt Leinart. USC had its 34-game winning streak snapped, denying the Trojans a national title three-peat. 

The details: Young already had been transcendent, but when the Longhorns fell behind by 12 points with 6:42 remaining, he became the entire offense. On Texas’s final two touchdown drives he ran or passed for all 125 yards, scoring two touchdowns and adding a two-point run. His fourth-and-5 touchdown run with 19 seconds left, followed by the two-point scamper, was the clincher.

Greater than Otani? No. It was a huge performance in a huge game, but it didn’t have the same level of versatility.

A Sports Illustrated cover featuring Texas Longhorns quarterback Vince Young.
John Biever/Sports Illustrated

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Pat Forde
PAT FORDE

Pat Forde is a senior writer for Sports Illustrated who covers college football and college basketball as well as the Olympics and horse racing. He cohosts the College Football Enquirer podcast and is a football analyst on the Big Ten Network. He previously worked for Yahoo Sports, ESPN and The (Louisville) Courier-Journal. Forde has won 28 Associated Press Sports Editors writing contest awards, has been published three times in the Best American Sports Writing book series, and was nominated for the 1990 Pulitzer Prize. A past president of the U.S. Basketball Writers Association and member of the Football Writers Association of America, he lives in Louisville with his wife. They have three children, all of whom were collegiate swimmers.

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