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The original was posted on /r/cfb by /u/DankMemesNQuickNuts on 2023-10-02 22:46:37.
Went down a bit of a rabbit hole today and thought about this for a minute, but has there ever been a single game in a program’s history that was more important than “The Pick” was for Oregon in 1994?
The way I understand it, this is the game that delivered them from being a laughing stock in the Pac10 to basically running the Northern half of the conference over the last quarter century. It also might have been the tipping point that finally got Phil Knight to donate massive amounts of money to Oregon athletics (there had been some minor signings of athletes before that and some loose affiliation with the school, and earlier that year he had paid $27m for library renovations, but no major donations to the athletics department until afterward).
Before this game they hadn’t made a Rose Bowl in 37 years. They’ve been to 9 NY6 bowls since and have made 2 national title games. Before they had an all-time record vs Washington of 28-54-5. Since that moment they are 20-7 in that game. They won the conference that year for the fifth time overall and the first time since 1957. They have had at least a share of the PAC10/12 title 8 times since.
Is there any other examples of this that you can think of? The only other one that came to mind was Appalachian State over Michigan in the Big House in 2007, which changed App State in a different way than Oregon but still in a very profound one.
If you have any other examples please share them! I’d love to hear them all