This is an opinion column.

I watched it, watched it like many of you. Watched it innocently engage, intriguingly unfold, and, well, just dang happen.

Watched as Chris Davis, a Birmingham-bred Auburn cornerback and return specialist, caught a dying dove of an Alabama 57-yard field goal attempt and proceeded to run it at the Tide’s slow-footed FG bunch (did they even practice for this what if?). Run it through them 109 yards into Iron Bowl immortality beneath the evening sky at Jordan-Hare.

34-28. What should have been a headed-to-overtime tie between No. 1 Alabama and NO. 4 Auburn was – well, it just dang happened.

It happened 10 years ago, a few months before I moved to Birmingham and joined AL.com. I was in my kitchen in a suburb 30 minutes north of New York City. In my kitchen watching, mouth agape. Like many of you.

How time passes—just as Nick Saban should have passed on begging for that :01. With the anniversary of the iconic 2013 game creeping upon us, our cool sports crew is flooding our timelines with “Kick Six” reminders of every sort.

Fans remember “Kick Six.”

Officials remember “Kick Six.”

Does anyone remember where the “Kick Six” ball is?

I love it all, and there’s lots more.

There’s this, too: Is “Kick Six” the greatest college football play ever? Depends on who you ask.

They didn’t ask me, alas. My response would have been quick and emphatic—nope.

There are plenty of “greatest play” candidates, of course, and likely every school has its own nominee, its own moment of improbable triumph or ignominious defeat. Its own defeat snatched from the jaws of victory.

If you know me at all, you know where I’m going with this. My pick for the greatest play in college football is so “great” it doesn’t need to brag about it. It’s known simply as “The Play”.

It was another final-second, rivalry-game deciding, rip-your-heart-out moment 41 years ago in what’s called “Big Game,” the annual Bay Area battle between Stanford, my alma mater, and a university across the water in Berkeley. At stake (beyond the invaluable spoil of smugness that goes to rivalry victors), was The Axe, a trophy that dates back to the 1900s—and has been stolen a few times.

My colleague Nick Alvarez mentioned “The Play” in his depends-on-who-you-ask take. Mentioned it in passing—one sentence in a paragraph of “contenders”—all were, he deftly wrote, “marriages of circumstance and magic.”

Except I love magic.

I wasn’t in Berkeley on that fall day—November 20, 1982. Having graduated four years prior, I was in Seattle covering the then-New Jersey Nets amid a brutal six-game west coast road swing. (They went 2-4)

So, I watched. Watched it innocently engage, intriguingly unfold, and, well, just dang happen.

The scene: Future NFL Hall of Fame quarterback John Elway, playing his final college game, took the field with 1:27 remaining in the fourth, the Cardinal trailing 19-17. At one juncture, Stanford stared at 4th-and-17 on our own 13 with fewer than 60 seconds left.

Three plays later, we were on the Cal 18, in position to kick a game-winner.

Alas, young Elway—like Saban three decades later—made what proved to be a critical mistake. Rather than allow the clock to wind down to, oh, :03 or so, ensuring the field goal attempt would be the final play, he called timeout with :08 remaining.

Mark Harmon (our kicker, not the name-twin UCLA QB/actor) nailed the 35-yarder to put us up 20-19. “We won!” Harmon thought to himself. So did pretty much everyone else. So did I.

At the other end of the field, our band, gathered behind the end zone, began playing “All Right Now,” the traditional victory song. They danced about as if intoxicated. As if.

Except :04 remained—and circumstance and magic had a thing going on.

Kevin Moen, a Cal defensive back not normally on the kickoff receiving team, gathered the ensuing squib-kick at his team’s 45 (premature celebrating cost us 15 yards on the kickoff).

Cue the mayhem.

Moen tossed an overhand lateral to a teammate to his left, who pitched to a teammate (Dwight Garner). Three more pitches and the ball was in Moen’s hands again.

(I mention Garner because the man’s knee touched the ground during a tackle attempt—yes, that was my petty typing—so anything that transpired subsequently never should have just dang happened. Alas, it would be 22 years before college football embraced instant replay.)

Moen zig-zagged through Stanford band members, who frolicked onto the field when the clock hit :00. He reached the end zone, inadvertently pummeling Gary Tyrell, a Stanford trombone player, who tumbled to the AstroTurf as Moen leaped in celebration—a moment captured in an iconic image by late Oakland Tribune photographer Robert Stinett.

25-20.

I’m joking about any lingering pain from the day. (Though Paul Wiggin, Stanford’s coach that day, may feel differently; the smiling image atop this column was taken during “The Play.” Wiggin was fired in 1983.) You gotta love rivalries. Two days later, the Stanford Daily published fake issues of the Daily Californian emblazoned with the front-page headline “NCAA awards Big Game to Stanford” and distributed them on the Berkeley campus.

Moen and Tyrell involved formed a bond that circumvented the rivalry. As did others. Elway joined Moen and Tyrell to commemorate the 25th anniversary on the Versus cable network, and one year ago yesterday former players for both teams shared a stage at Stanford to reminisce.

To laugh, tease, and celebrate 40 years since the greatest dang marriage of circumstance and magic in college football.

I’m a Pulitzer Prize finalist for commentary, a member of the National Association of Black Journalists Hall of Fame, and winner of the Edward R. Murrow prize for podcasts for “Unjustifiable,” co-hosted with John Archibald. My column appears in AL.com, as well as the Lede. Check out my new podcast series “Panther: Blueprint for Black Power,” which I co-host with Eunice Elliott. Subscribe to my free weekly newsletter, The Barbershop, here. Reach me at [email protected], follow me at twitter.com/roysj, or on Instagram @roysj