Before he’d find his way onto the field during a timeout or tell Nick Marshall to throw to him or, for some reason he still doesn’t know, just keep running until the ball miraculously fell into his hands, Ricardo Louis was at the beach where it all started about eight months prior in Panama City Beach, Florida.

It was spring break in 2013. Auburn had gone 3-9 that past fall, Louis’ freshman year. Louis said he was walking off the beach wearing Auburn gear. Coming the other way, were a few Georgia players he recognized.

“They were making fun of us and making fun of the record we had, making us look bad,” Louis said in an interview with AL.com. “I took it very personal at that time. I felt embarrassed. In my mind, it was just like, ‘We’ll see you next year.’ That’s what I told myself, ‘We’ll see you guys next year.’”

Louis hadn’t forgotten this when he took the field against then-No. 25 Georgia on Nov. 16, 2013. Auburn was 9-1, ranked No. 7. It had already been a stunning turnaround under first-year head coach Gus Malzahn. Win here, and set up the most consequential Iron Bowl in that rivalry’s history.

Auburn led 27-10 at halftime and 37-17 with just over 12 minutes to go in the game. Everything collapsed. Ten minutes later, Auburn trailed 38-37. The Tigers got the ball back and faced 4th-and-18 on their own half of the field. There were 36 seconds left.

Marshall had been sacked on third down, which forced Auburn to call timeout. Louis wasn’t on the field for during that third down. With time ticking, if not for Auburn having to stop the clock, he wouldn’t have gotten on the field.

Louis said he was pacing up and down the sideline. He wanted to be playing on this drive. He looked up in the stands. He could see some fans were hopeful. He could see others with a look on their face seeming to say, “It’s over.”

But Auburn needed 18 yards, or the game was over. Louis was called on.

“After the play was called, I told Nick to throw the ball,” Louis said. “I don’t know why. I don’t know what made me say that. But I was feeling it that game. I was like, ‘Nick, hey man, just throw it. Throw it to me.’ He looked at me. He gave me that look. That look maybe lasted like two seconds, but in those two seconds, he gave me that look. You could write a whole book about that look.”

So, here’s “what was supposed to happen”.

Louis was meant to go deep running a post route, but the play was designed for Sammie Coates. Coates ran a deep in route, about 20 yards down the field. He would catch the ball, get the first down, and Auburn would set up for the game-winning field goal. Watch the play again. Coates was wide open.

But in that moment, Marshall never saw him. The ball was going to Louis — even though there was no way it could have ended up as anything other than an interception with two Georgia defenders positioned under the ball.

Or at least, that’s what was supposed to happen. Georgia’s defenders jumped into each other, the ball bounced off their hands and tantalizingly trickled through the air back over them. Louis never stopped running. Whatever it was — fate, good fortune, a prayer — Louis was somehow in the perfect place at the perfect time, catching the ball and racing into the endzone.

Auburn would go on to win 44-38. It won the Iron Bowl two weeks later on a miracle that made Louis’ moment impossibly take a back seat. It won the SEC and went to the BCS National Championship.

“When I was a kid, I would take a towel wrapped around my neck and just imagine being a superhero,” Louis said. “It is a childhood dream, it definitely is. To be a hero, to be considered a hero.”

Putting words to history

As soon as Marshall let go of the ball, Gary Danielson thought the pass would be intercepted. Louis had seemed to slow down, he said. Why in the world did that pass not get thrown to Sammie Coates?

“Everything went wrong, except for the outcome,” Danielson said in an interview with AL.com.

Danielson was on the call for that memorable game for CBS along with Verne Lundquist.

“Let’s it go…” Lundquist said on the broadcast as Marshall threw the ball. Silence as the ball soared through the air. And as it fell into Louis’ hands, “Oh my gosh! Oh my gosh! Oh no! Ricardo Louis!”

Somehow, Lundquist and Danielson have to put words to such a legendary moment, with no time to prepare.

“I remember it like it was yesterday the same feeling of both games of how hard it is not to choke up,” Danielson said thinking back to the Prayer at Jordan-Hare and Kick Six. “Then you’re trying to do it justice, and listening to what Verne is saying. Verne was at his best on that call and two weeks later the next call. It’s also trying to explain to the fans who doesn’t have the same perspective as I do just how improbable that this ball should never been thrown. Nobody on the sidelines thought he should have thrown it there. It’s almost like a punt and you got a touchdown out of it. Trying to put that into words. I don’t even remember what I actually said.”

What he said was simple, succinct and only accurate for the following 13 days.

“It’s the play of the year,” Danielson said on the call.

Of course, he didn’t know then what would happen two weeks later.

Danielson will be back in Jordan-Hare Stadium on Saturday as CBS broadcasts this year’s edition of the Deep South’s Oldest Rivalry at 2:30 p.m., a decade after arguably its most famous moment.

He said he and CBS certainly have plans to think back to that fateful night during this week’s game.

Origins of ‘Prayer at Jordan-Hare’

There’s a debate over who had the phrase first. Former Birmingham News/AL.com writer Brandon Marcello claims it was a Kevin Scarbinsky column.

As a writer, it was hard to ignore the prospect of the coming titanic Iron Bowl if Auburn could beat Georgia. And it seemed Auburn was on track to make that happen. Until it blew a 20-point lead in the 4th quarter.

“I was convinced that they had just blown it,” Marcello said. “And a season that was on the precipice of being one that could potentially be special was maybe just going to end up as one you know, as a nice bounce-back story.”

Like most others in the press box, Marcello immediately thought the ball would be intercepted when it was thrown. Somehow, it wasn’t.

There was a sense of shock in Auburn’s press box, then located at the 50-yard line in Jordan-Hare Stadium and not behind the southern endzone like now. it was such a stunning moment that Marcello remembers former AL.com writer Joel A. Erickson cussed after the play — something he was known for rarely, if ever, doing.

The Auburn in the coaches’ booths next door were pounding on the walls in celebration, Marcello remembers.

Then like Danielson, Marcello had to find a way to put it all into words. He tried to find a nickname for it. He tried “Marshall’s Miracle,” but that wasn’t right. Then the right words came.

“In the moment you’re trying to not have writer’s block because it’s a special moment and you want to do justice to what you just saw,” Marcello said. “I remember I was sitting next to Kevin Scarbinsky, our columnist at Birmingham News at the time. He had already come up with something and it was perfect. It was the Prayer at Jordan-Hare.”

A race across the country

ESPN’s College Gameday was in Los Angeles that weekend, a bit out of the football comfort zone for Paul Finebaum.

The host of the famous Paul Finebaum Show was part of that year’s Gameday crew. The SEC Network didn’t exist yet. Finebaum and his wife still lived in Birmingham from his time as a reporter and radio host there. His flight path back home after the broadcast that morning was from Los Angeles to Charlotte to Birmingham — right in the middle of the Auburn game.

He was trying to watch the game, but as he landed in Charlotte with a quick change to his Birmingham flight, Finebaum couldn’t find the game at the airport.

He raced to a different terminal to catch his flight, but every TV at a sports bar had a NASCAR race on. He figured he didn’t have time to stop and check the Auburn score.

“I’m going crazy,” Finebaum said.

He made it to check in for his flight and then went to the US Airways lounge. Finally, a TV with the game on.

Finebaum said there were some Florida fans there. They said Auburn was about to lose. Finebaum saw Auburn call a timeout to prepare for 4th-and-18 and turned to pick up his bags as the flight was about to board. He thought it was over, too.

Then he heard the Florida fans scream.

“I don’t believe it,” Finebaum remembers thinking.

But he couldn’t get on the plane yet. The game wasn’t final. He watched Georgia get the ball and threaten to take the lead back before Auburn held on. He zipped over onto the plane with the very last boarding group.

“I’m in shock,” Finebaum said. “I’m holding my breath and they’re already on like boarding group nine.”

Finebaum sat down and checked his phone one more time before the plane took off. It started to sink in. Auburn had pulled off this miracle.

And he knew he wouldn’t have to travel quite as far for College Gameday in Auburn before the biggest Iron Bowl of his life.

10 years later, Louis is an artist

It took a few years for the gravity of the moment to set in.

“I didn’t know at that time when I was 19 years old,” Louis said. “It took years for me to really sit back and watch that play over and over again. To really sit back and see the impact it had. What really made it hit home for me was just seeing the fans’ reactions to it.”

Watching videos of Auburn fans celebrating the play still makes Louis emotional.

After Auburn, Louis went to the NFL, initially with the Cleveland Browns. He started 12 games there over the 2016 and 2017 seasons. He missed the 2018 season with a neck injury and went to the Miami Dolphins where he proceeded to miss the 2019 season with a knee injury. He’d eventually make his way to Canada to play with the Saskatchewan Roughriders — where he would be teammates with Marshall.

Now, a decade later and Auburn set to play Georgia again, Louis is out of football.

These days he’s back living in Miami. He said he’s involved with investing and the stock markets now, trading in the NASDAQ and S&P 500. He’s been investing in real estate, too. Sometimes, he said, it’s harder than football.

Louis misses football. But in his time away from the game he found a passion for art in his loneliest moments.

“I had to question myself,” Louis said. “I felt at the time the only way I could really be happy and feel good about myself is if I’m playing football. I realized that was my only outlet.”

It was incredibly difficult to sit at home while he was injured. He wanted to play but he couldn’t. He was forced to sit and watch as his friends lived out the dream he wanted. Louis said he needed to find an outlet to “escape the pain.”

He picked up a pencil and a sketchbook. It gave him a sense of fulfillment.

“Just like most artists, they always have a piece and there’s a story behind it,” Louis said. “How they did it, why they did it. And for me, I surrounded all my pieces around the idea of mental health and helping people with issues with mental health because that’s essentially what I was dealing with at the time. Me being in a dark place with injuries and not knowing you know which way to go.”

Sketches transitioned to abstract paintings which are inspired by an awareness of his own mental health and others’. He paints 60-inch by 72-inch canvases now, typically about once a week. The first painting was called ‘Time Flies.’ The projects progressively got bolder as Louis got better.

Art got Louis through one of the most difficult parts of his life. He paints about feeling misunderstood in those moments of struggle. He said he paints abstractly because he wants people to feel different emotions when looking at the same piece.

“That’s the power of the piece,” Louis said. “The idea of it being part of mental health, I mean, it sounds crazy to say but back when I started, I had been dealing with mental health issues with this idea of just not wanting to be here anymore and just being depressed and have anxiety and just not being who you need to be, having peace is art. Art is never perfect.”

Time flies over these 10 years. They’re meant to be imperfect.

Matt Cohen covers Auburn sports for AL.com. You can follow him on Twitter at @Matt_Cohen_ or email him at [email protected]