College football often gets more attention than it really deserves. It is, after all, an amateur sport - if you look here for great moments, you may as well start looking at high-school pickup games.

   The level of play here does occasionally reach professional status. Still, just three college football performances made my top-20 lists - the Notre-Dame Army game of 1913; the 1984 Cotton Bowl, which Doug Flutie ended with a truly spectacular "Hail Mary" pass; and the inimitable "The Play," which ended the Stanford-Cal game of 1982.

   There is also the story of "Wrong Way" Roy Regals, who went almost ninety yards in the wrong direction during the 1929 Rose Bowl (Infamy #10).

   Also, it is actually quite rare that a national title gets put on the line in a single bowl game - by my count, that has happened just 11 times in history:

1. Nebraska 62, Florida 24 - 1996 Fiesta Bowl

2. Florida State 18, Nebraska 16 - 1994 Orange Bowl

3. Alabama 34, Miami 13 - 1993 Sugar Bowl

4. Miami 20, Oklahoma 14 - 1988 Orange Bowl

5. Penn State 14, Miami 10 - 1987 Fiesta Bowl

6. Penn State 27, Georgia 23 - 1983 Sugar Bowl

7. Alabama 14, Penn State 7 - 1979 Sugar Bowl

8. Nebraska 38, Alabama 6 - 1972 Orange Bowl

9. Ohio State 27, USC 16 - 1969 Rose Bowl

10. Texas 28, Navy 6 - 1964 Cotton Bowl

11. USC 42, Wisconsin 37 - 1963 Rose Bowl

   For the first time in 59 years, Harvard and Yale entered "The Game" unbeaten and untied. Yale was up 22-0 at one point, but second-string Harvard quarterback Frank Champi engineered a stunning comeback.

   Champi threw a 15-yard touchdown pass to Bruce Freeman with 42 seconds left, and a two-point conversion run by Gus Crim cut the deficit to 29-21. Harvard then recovered the on-side kick, and on the final regular play of the game, Champi scrambled away from three desperate Yale pursuers and threw to Vic Gatto in the end zone for an 8-yard TD pass. Champi completed Harvard's incredible comeback by backpedaling to the 15 before throwing a strike to Peter Varney for the game-tying two-point conversion.

   The next day, The Harvard Crimson crowed: "Harvard Beats Yale, 29-29."

   Two years to the day after the Miami Dolphins-San Diego Chargers overtime epic, the Orange Bowl saw another classic football game. Nebraska entered the Orange Bowl ranked #1, and undefeated, with the most devastating offense of the post-war era.

   The Miami Hurricanes were 12-point underdogs, but with the advantage of playing in their home stadium, they stifled the Cornhuskers' option play and jumped out to a 17-0 lead.  NU rallied, beginning with the famed "Fumbleroosky play," with Dean Steinkuhler running it in from the 19. But after the huskers tieds it at 17, Miami went back out to a 31-17 lead.

   In the fourth quarter, QB Turner Gill led Nebraska back again, and on a critical 4th-and-8 he pitched to Jeff Smith, who ran it in from 24 yards out with 48 seconds left in the game to bring NU to within one.

   With a national title just an extra point away, Nebraska coach Tom Osborne decided to go for the win. It was a daring, honorable move - unfortunately, Gill's pass to Smith in the end zone was deflected and Miami had it's first national title.

   Everyone makes mistakes - even referees.

   Red Friesell committed an error for the ages when he allowed a powerful Cornell team a fifth down in the final seconds of the Cornell-Dartmouth game in 1940. Big Red scored on a six-yard touchdown pass for an apparent 7-3 victory over Dartmouth at Hanover, N.H.

   But two days later, after reviewing films of the game at Dartmouth's urging, Friesell admitted that he made a mistake and that Dartmouth should have taken over on downs after a fourth-down pass was incomplete. Though there are no rules compelling the outcome to be changed, Cornell (in a magnanimous act of sportsmanship) relinquished the win.

   The game went into the books as a 3-0 Dartmouth victory, ending Cornell's 18-game unbeaten streak.