In-Vince-able

Tweet

For the most part, Southern California couldn't even lay a hand on Vince Young, which had to be the most unbelievable part of the most unbelievable performance of 2006. The year may have been just five days old, but the heroics stood up – to Dwyane Wade, to Tiger Woods, to David Eckstein – deservedly winning the Yahoo! Sports fan voting for Story of the Year. Young didn't just make touchdown dash after touchdown dash in the fourth quarter of the BCS championship game, driving Texas to a 41-38 victory. It seemed at times like he could have done it had they been playing touch football out there, just slipping by defenders as they grasped for air and dove after shadows. Everyone in the overstuffed Rose Bowl knew Young was getting it out of the shotgun on every play, everyone knew that unless a Longhorn receiver was wide open Young was running and yet USC had no answer. The Trojans could have lined the team photo up on defense and Vince Young would have found a way to weave through it for another score. USC entered the game boasting a 34-game win streak, two Heisman Trophy winners and a recent ESPN hype machine special that compared them to some of the best teams ever. Texas had Vince Young. No contest. Football is the ultimate team game, but if there was ever a night that one player dominated the proceedings, the way a guy can in basketball, then this was it. Young completed 30 of 40 passes for 267 yards. He rushed 19 times for 200 yards, three touchdowns and a two-point conversation, including the game winner on fourth down with 19 seconds remaining. He had another play where he was downfield on a scramble, drew the entire SC defense to him, and flipped a lateral to a teammate for another TD. He was simply incredible."[He] ran all over the place," Trojans coach Pete Carroll said. "It[was] extremely frustrating. We'd look like we were going to sack him and not sack him."Young was so dominant that with 2:09 remaining and USC holding a 38-33 lead and faced with fourth-and-3, Carroll chose not to punt the Longhorns into the longest of fields and instead went for it. The reasoning, in part, was that if Young got the ball back, even with 99 yards to go, USC was in trouble. Everyone knew it. There could be no second guessing of Carroll for violating Football 101."We told[the defense] that if you stop this fourth down, we're going to win the national championship," Texas coach Mack Brown said. Texas held. Young got the ball. And the Trojans hardly laid a hand on him. For the rest of 2006's memorable moments – from the perspective of a sports writer who gets to see so much of the great stuff firsthand – here is my own personal scrapbook, starting with V.Y. First, we asked you to vote for the top story of 2006 in each sport. Then we had you choose the story of the year in sports. Well, here are the results. Included in parentheses are the vote tallies. A total of 65,641 votes were cast. 13. Bode Miller enters Winter Olympics amid much hype – then flops (638 votes) 12. Tony Stewart misses NASCAR Chase, but Jeff Gordon, Junior return (793) 11. Evgeni Malkin mysteriously bolts Russia, then joins NHL (887) 10. Floyd Landis wins Tour de France, tests positive for doping (2,718) 9. Barbaro suffers near-fatal injury at Preakness (3,412) 8. Andre Agassi says goodbye to tennis (4,180) 7. Cardinals win the World Series (5,081) 6. Kobe Bryant scores second-most points ever – 81 – in an NBA game (6,011) 5. Texans draft Mario Williams, not Reggie Bush, with NFL's top pick (6,116) 4. Zinedine Zidane's career ends with head-butt in World Cup final (6,942) 3. Tiger Woods wins six tournaments in a row, including British and PGA (7,240) 2. Cinderella story: George Mason makes the Final Four of NCAA tournament (7,692) 1. Texas edges USC for national title in thrilling Rose Bowl upset win (13,931)