Daniel Murray is the kind of guy the NCAA might be tempted to invent – if he didn’t already exist.
In an era of athletes traveling the country for the best offer, he’s a hometown boy who grew up fantasizing about playing for the hometown team. He pays his own way at the University of Iowa, where he takes his mechanical engineering studies just as seriously as he does his football.
He’ll never make millions playing on Sundays in the NFL, but that wasn’t why he walked on for the Hawkeyes to begin with. He plays for fun, knowing that in a few years he won’t be playing any longer.
In many ways, he’s a lot like college football players used to be – a lot like the NCAA would have you believe they still are. Most aren’t any more, of course, because the sport has become filled with millionaire coaches and high-priced programs chasing even more millions in the BCS.
Teams have walk-ons like Murray only because they’ve run out of scholarships to hand to someone who might be better. Guys like him are more an afterthought than anything else – insurance in case disaster hits, and helpful in keeping graduation rates up.
Before Saturday, only die-hard Iowa fans knew Murray’s name. Before he walked out onto the field in the closing seconds against No. 3 Penn State, he had lost his kicking job after making only one field goal all year.
He would either be the Big Man On Campus, or the goat who cost Iowa its biggest win in years. He would either destroy Penn State’s national championship hopes, or leave the Nittany Lions with a nice path to the title game.
There was no in between.
“I don’t know if the coaches had some special feeling or something that I’d make it. I don’t know if I’ll ever know,” Murray said in a phone call between classes Monday. “One of the assistant coaches just kind of looked at me and said, `You’ve got the kick.”’
Yes he did.
The 31-yarder was true all the way, sending 70,585 fans at Kinnick Stadium into delirious celebration as Murray sprinted away and slid on the turf in celebration.
He could have gone to Kentucky on a soccer scholarship, with most expenses paid. But what would have been the fun in that, when he had a chance to be a hero in front of the people he grew up with?
“I don’t think I’ll ever forget it even if I never attempt another kick in my life,” Murray said.
Not many in Iowa will forget it, either. The win was so big the governor even issued a statement celebrating the team.
, but don’t bet against it.
That’s still the beauty of college athletics, especially in a college town like Iowa City that takes football so seriously that the last 36 home games have sold out. Unlike the NFL, there’s still a chance of something happening that wasn’t bought and paid for.
Increasingly, though, college football is just big business. If any more proof of that was needed, just check the pay stubs of the two head coaches on the sidelines when Alabama was playing LSU on Saturday. Between them, Nick Saban and Les Miles are pulling in a combined $7.5 million a year.
The pressure to succeed and make it into the BCS games is so big that a coach like Tennessee’s Phillip Fulmer can win three out of every four games and still get canned midway through his 17th season. And while losing one game used to count as a great season, Penn State will be remembered for blowing its chance by losing one game this year more than anything else.
Murray inadvertently helped muddy things even further in the BCS with his kick. With Penn State losing, the number of undefeated teams in serious contention for the national title game shrank to just Alabama and Texas Tech, and both schools must make their way through some minefields to stay that way.
If they don’t, there will be another huge BCS mess that can be argued about, with a handful of once-beaten teams all clamoring for their right to be in the title game. College football used to be about bragging rights, but now it’s more about the rights to millions of dollars in television money in the BCS.
That didn’t matter much to Murray on Monday as he returned to class to receive congratulations from his fellow engineering students. He had grown up dreaming of kicking field goals to win games for Iowa, and the games didn’t get any bigger than this.
There was something almost pure about the way the game was won.
Something more suited to a different time.
“Just being the hometown kid I always wanted to play here,” Murray said. “To be the hometown kid who can help the hometown team win is beyond just fun.”
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Tim Dahlberg is a national sports columnist for The Associated Press. Write to him at tdahlbergap.org
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