Best Video Game Performance

By JOHN SEARS - BIG TEN INSIDER

Performances that can only be believed if they were played out on a controller with too many buttons:

5. Terrelle Pryor scrambling, against Northwestern: It’s interesting how comparisons between college football players and video games have hit the mainstream media (see Kirk Herbstreit on various occasions). But sometimes it’s fitting when superior athletes such as Terrelle Pryor make the improbable look routine just by hitting their mental circle button to spin out of a tackle, right joystick right juke, now back, R2 to sprint left, right joystick juke again, now connect on a touchdown strike -- 45-10 over 9-3 Northwestern.

4. Mike Kafka rushing, against Minnesota: Here’s another video game classic – you knock out the star starting quarterback (in this instance C.J. Bacher) and the back-up (Mike Kafka) comes in and starts moving the ball downfield like he’s Joe Montana in Super Bowl XXIII. In this instance, nobody but the Northwestern defensive practice squad saw Kafka’s Big Ten quarterback rushing record of 214 yards coming.

3. Juice Williams doing everything, against Michigan: How about when the computer walks into one of the stadiums you have built as one of the “toughest places to play” (Michigan Stadium) and the opposing quarterback simply breaks the stadium record for total yards? Williams cashed in with 431 (310 passing, 121 rushing) to be exact and ran up the score with two scores rushing and two passing. Not bad for a road game in a “tough place to play”.

2. Wisconsin rushing, against Indiana: Another video game classic – where you are expected to put up monstrous numbers, like 400 yards offense against the computer, and somehow it just doesn’t work out. But for the Badgers it did – Hill, Clay and Gilreath combine for 406 yards rushing and six touchdowns.

1. Iowa, against Penn State: The “There’s no way in hell you are beating the computer” game where everything goes wrong (I certainly acknowledge Bill Simmons for describing this circumstance in his past columns). Severe winds so your offense can’t move the ball in the air, the computer’s (Iowa’s) defense making all the right calls at the right times, making big play after big play, then taking away the ball late in the fourth quarter with an interception and capping it all off with a suddenly unstoppable offense that finds just enough room to get in field goal range and kick the winning field goal with almost no time left. Where’s the *bleeping* reset button?!

Tomorrow: Best One-Two Punches

Photo Credit: College Press Box (Iowa)