In Football Clock Management, I told of a game in which the QB of the leading team stopped playing after the final gun sounded. An opposing player stuck out his hand offering congratulations. When the QB extended his hand to shake, the defender stole the ball and ran the length of the field for the game-winning touchdown.
I received an email from a player in that game. Phil Barnett was a junior tight end on the Shawnee Mission South High School team that lost the game. He gives these details. At the snap, there were about six seconds left. QB Butch Ross took the snap, ran around with and never took a knee. Shawnee Mission West free safety John Richert extended his hand to Ross after the horn. He stole the ball when Ross extended his hand and ran about 30 yards for the game-winning touchdown. This was a regional playoff game in front of a crowd of about 6,000 or 7,000. Sports Illustrated wrote a brief article about it.
Ever since my came out in September of 1997, I have been expecting to see something from my book in a televised game. It finally happened, I think. At the end of the Arizona-TCU game on 9/5/99, Arizona was ahead and had fourth down with the clock stopped by a TCU timeout. There ere three seconds left in the game. If Arizona had just taken a knee, there probably would have been time left on the clock for one play by TCU.
The game was at TCU so the finger on the clock was a TCU finger.Instead of taking a knee, Arizona's QB ran out to the left losing about 15 yards on the play. After the final gun went off, he slid. That looked like a version of the quarterback keep sweep slide, a play which I believe I invented in my book. I had never seen or heard of it previously.The time and opponent timeouts remaining at the beginning of that final series probably was such that they should have run a quarterback keep sweep slide on the first-down play. Waiting until the fourth-down play is cutting it awfully close
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