Impossible Is Nothing

In a previous blog entry entitled "The Big Five," there was one sentence that took me several minutes to write: "There is a chance - and let's be honest, it's a slim one - that none of the Big Three will claim a conference crown in 2005."

I really sweated that statement. After all, we know that Florida is out of the SEC Championship game, but FSU has already clinched a spot in the inaugural ACC title game. Miami, with a win in hand over Virginia Tech, needed only to beat Georgia Tech and Virginia to set up a rematch with Florida State in the ACC championship and thus assure that one of the Big Three would indeed claim a conference title this season. The Hurricanes, with eight straight wins and the best defense in the nation, seemed a mortal lock to win out and blow up my hypothesis.

Nope.

Thanks to an anemic offensive performance against Georgia Tech at the Orange Bowl on Saturday night, the 'Canes are pretty much dead in the water. All Virginia Tech has to do is beat 5-5 North Carolina - a team that escaped with a three-point win over Duke this week - and the Hokies will face the Seminoles in the ACC title match, no matter what Miami does against Virginia next Saturday. If it's Virginia Tech against Florida State in Jacksonville, who would you pick?

Thought so. I never wished for the Big Three to lay a cumulative egg, but with the Miami loss, there's a much better chance. How do you like the "Big Five" theory now?

One year after 0-11, the Golden Knights are in the Conference USA championship game after coming from behind twice in the fourth quarter to beat Rice on Saturday. Fittingly, the UCF win was sealed by a Joe Burnett interception with 27 seconds left.

Burnett, who also returned a punt 58 yards for a TD in the first quarter, is a freshman, one of George O'Leary's guys. He has no memory of 0-11. Wide receiver Brandon Marshall, a senior, certainly remembers the winless season, but his touchdown catch from Steven Moffett with 85 seconds to play will go a long way in erasing that memory.

Here's the best part - not only are the Knights in the C-USA title game, they're hosting it, thanks to UTEP's loss to UAB on the same day. The headline in Sunday's Orlando Sentinel read "Believe It!" How am I supposed to believe this?

Nothing seems beyond reach in this state right now. Consider the University of South Florida, which forced two turnovers in the third quarter en route to blowing out Cincinnati 31-16 on Saturday. Not only are the Bulls bowl-eligible at 6-3, they are on course to challenge for the Big East championship - like UCF, their first year in a new league - and claim the BCS bowl berth that follows. All it takes is a win at Connecticut next week, followed by a win at home against West Virginia on December 3rd. Not the easiest road, but how can anyone justify remaining cynical now?

Andre Hall, still the best running back in the state by a wide margin, went over 1,000 yards for the season and scored his 15th touchdown of the year. Later, he told the media that he wants to "mess up the nation for a little bit." Done. A reminder - USF started playing intercollegiate football in 1997.

And how's this for a story - Florida A&M, just a few months removed from 200 NCAA violations and a humiliating move back to I-AA football, beat archrival Bethune-Cookman on Saturday in front of 70,112 fans at the Florida Classic in Orlando to give Fort Lauderdale native Rubin Carter a 6-5 record in his first season as head coach. It was the second straight Classic that went to overtime, the fourth straight to be decided by a touchdown or less, and required the Rattlers to score the final sixteen points of the game, ten of those in the fourth quarter. Wesley Taylor's overtime field goal, his fourth of the game, ended B-CC's three-game winning streak in the series.

From 200 violations to a winning record? From a 17-game losing streak to a conference championship game? From football birth to a potential BCS berth in less than a decade? The whole thing is preposterous. Yet it's happening, right in our backyards. Nothing is impossible anymore.