ATLANTA — Texas may or may not be the nation’s best football program when the 2024 season ends. But Arizona State has already claimed the title of Most Entertaining, whatever the scoreboard says. And the Sun Devils’ Cam Skattebo might have just forced a 2024 Heisman re-vote.
Texas won the Peach Bowl on Wednesday afternoon in a ridiculously entertaining 39-31 double-overtime victory, and now advances to the Cotton Bowl in Dallas to face the Rose Bowl winner. Arizona State, meanwhile, has wrapped one of the most wildly thrilling seasons in recent college football history, bruised the hell out of the Longhorns, and created a bona fide folk hero along the way.
Skattebo, who finished fifth in this year’s Heisman voting, will live on in Texas nightmares after Wednesday, a reminder that records, resumes, history and pedigrees don’t mean a damn thing between the tackles.
The Sun Devils were 13 ½-point underdogs, and early on, that appeared to be a generous line. The Longhorns hung 14 points on the Sun Devils in just over a minute in the first quarter. Texas quarterback Quinn Ewers threw just two passes — a 54-yarder to Matthew Golden and a 23-yarder to DeAndre Moore Jr. — and Texas got out to a 7-3 lead less than seven minutes into the game.
One Arizona State three-and-out later, Texas’ Silas Bolden returned a punt 75 yards for a touchdown. The score stood at 14-3, and the game looked like it was about to become the fifth straight blowout of the College Football Playoff.
Over the next two-and-a-half quarters, though, a strange stalemate ensued. Arizona State held onto the ball for nearly three times as long as Texas, 32:49 to 12:11 through three quarters. But the Sun Devils simply couldn’t close the deal. Five straight drives, Arizona State got inside the Texas 40 — three of those into the red zone — and came away with a total of only three points. But at the same time, the Sun Devils were harassing the hell out of the Longhorns, making the short time Texas was on the field miserable. An Arizona State drive that stalled at the Texas 2 led directly to a safety on the Longhorns, which would prove significant soon enough.
And then came the fourth quarter, when all hell — and Cam Skattebo — broke loose. First, Ewers, who had struggled after that initial drive, guided Texas on a crucial 13-play, 76-yard touchdown drive to go up 24-8 and apparently salt the game away.
Skattebo had other ideas. He threw — yes, threw — a 42-yard touchdown pass to Malik McClain, and Arizona State converted a two-point conversion to close the gap to 24-16. Two plays later, Arizona State’s Javan Robinson intercepted Ewers. Skattebo made Texas pay, burning the Longhorns on the very next play for 62 yards and, soon afterward, punching in both a touchdown and the tying two-point conversion.
Deeply rattled, Texas drove 35 yards before stalling out, and kicker Bert Auburn’s 48-yard field goal attempt flew wide right, leaving the score at 24-24 with 1:39 remaining. Arizona State’s ensuing drive stopped at midfield with a controversial non-targeting call.
Ewers then took over at the Texas 20 with 57 seconds remaining in the fourth. With the game in his hands, Ewers calmly led the Longhorns down to the Arizona State 21 to set up a 39-yard game-winning field goal attempt with just two seconds remaining. Auburn’s kick was more than long enough, but it doinked off the left upright to set up overtime.
Arizona State got the ball first in overtime, and quarterback Sam Leavitt very nearly hooked up with McClain for another long touchdown. Arizona State opted to go for it on fourth-and-1, and Leavitt kept the ball on a sneak to convert. Later, facing a third-and-14, he scrambled for 16 yards to set up first-and-goal at the Texas 23. You know what happened next … Skattebo barreled in for the touchdown to put Arizona State up 31-24.
On Texas’ first overtime possession, behind for the first time since trailing 3-0, the Longhorns struggled to move the ball, and quickly faced a fourth-and-8 — that became fourth-and-13 after a penalty — for the game. But Golden got behind the Arizona State defense, and Ewers found him for an all-or-nothing 28-yard touchdown to force a second overtime period.
This time, Texas didn’t mess around. Ewers found Gunnar Helm for a 25-yard touchdown on the first play of the second overtime, and then again targeted Golden for the successful two-point conversion to go up 39-31.
Skattebo caught a short pass to advance to the Texas 12 on the first play of Arizona State’s second possession. But Leavitt’s final pass of the day was intercepted by Texas’ Andrew Mukuba, and Arizona State’s dream season died just short of the end zone.
The two programs took wildly different routes to get to Atlanta. Prior to the Peach Bowl, Texas and Arizona State had met exactly one time in history: 2007, when a Colt McCoy-led Longhorn team knocked off the Sun Devils, 52-34.
This year, Texas began the season as one of the nation’s highest-ranked programs, while Arizona State was projected to finish in the bottom of the Big 12. Texas returned its pair of marquee quarterbacks, Quinn Ewers and Arch Manning, and a gentle SEC schedule helped ease the Longhorns’ transition into their new conference. Struggles against Georgia in both the regular season and the SEC championship pushed Texas into the No. 5 slot, where the Longhorns easily handled 12th-seeded Clemson in the first round of the playoff.
At the other end of the preseason polls, Kenny Dillingham’s 2024 Sun Devils were nothing if not opportunistic, both on the field and in the transfer portal. Embodied by thundering running back Cam Skattebo, Arizona State threw a freewheeling, chaotic offense at the Big 12, and more often than not came out on top. The Sun Devils won the Big 12 conference championship and rolled into the College Football Playoff at 11-2.
Clemson’s upset victory in the ACC championship opened the door for Arizona State to claim the final first-round bye spot despite being seeded 12th in the CFP rankings. The Peach Bowl had been designated the “home” site of the ACC champion, but when lower-ranked Clemson won the ACC’s automatic bid, Arizona State moved into the slot … leading to the odd scenario of two schools traveling across half the country for the game.
Perhaps it was the distance, or perhaps it was the fact that Texas could potentially play three games in Atlanta over six weeks — including the SEC and national championships — but attendance at the game was less-than-capacity. Get-in prices dipped as low as $14 in the hours before kickoff. That’s a problem that college football’s powers-that-be will need to address in future seasons.
Texas will return home for the next round, meeting the winner of the Oregon-Ohio State Rose Bowl in Dallas on Jan. 10. What will the Longhorns have learned by then from their brush with oblivion? It’s an open question, and one Texas will need to answer very quickly if it wants to advance any further in the playoffs.
