10 greatest college football national championship games

3. Texas takes down USC 41-38 in 2006 Rose Bowl victory for the BCS

One of the most competitive games of the BCS era takes the third spot on the list of top games featuring No. 1 against No. 2 in a bowl game. The game is memorable for Vince Young’s 4th-and-5 run for the winning touchdown, but the game between No. 1 USC and No. 2 Texas was notable beyond the heart-stopping finish at the 2006 Rose Bowl in Pasadena.

Matt Leinart and Vince Young, two of the Heisman finalists that year, traded punches all day long. Leinart, the 2004 Heisman winner, went off for 365 yards with a touchdown and an interception as he finished with 29 completions on 40 attempts. the 2004 Heisman winner threw for more yards than Young, but the Texas star’s dual-threat skills proved more critical in the end.

Texas and USC traded punches all day, swapping the lead back and forth six times before the final whistle.  The Longhorns looked like they were out of luck when Leinart found Dwayne Jarrett for a 22-yard touchdown to go up 38-26 with 6:38 remaining.

Then the Longhorns started chipping away. Young pulled things back within one score as he finished off a 69-yard drive with a 17-yard dash to the endzone. After the defense held USC on the ensuing drive, Texas got the ball back near midfield after LenDale White’s inability to pick up the first down handed the ball back to the Longhorns after the fourth-down stop.

The rest was history. Using less than two minutes of clock, the Longhorns moved downfield but bogged down in the red zone. Finding themselves dealing with fourth down, Vince Young made the difference. Not only did he bust through the defense of the Pac-12 champions, he left just 19 seconds on the clock.  With no time to engineer a seventh lead change, the Trojans saw their 34-game winning streak ended by Young and crew.