you know a college BB game is over when the team leading plays the guys at the end of the bench. That’s normally with around 2 or 3 minutes left in the game.
I once saw a pre-season game, Eagles v. Giants where the game was telecast on a delay and I already knew that the Eagles had won 24-23. So when the Giants were ahead 23-10 with something like a minute to go, I was really scratching my head. But they scored twice. I don’t recall if there was an onside kick or just using timeouts. This would have been around 1963 or 1964.
Looks like it aired here, which means YouTubeTV recorded it for me. So maybe I’ll check it out. Who doesn’t love a review that drags on forever?
a high school football game in Texas had a big comeback late in the game, I think the team scored 3 TDs late to tie and won in OT.
The famous NFL Heidi game had the Raiders score 2 TDs in the final minute to win. East coast viewers did not see the comeback.
As a Pacers fan, I can’t let this go without mentioning Reggie Miller’s 8 points in 9 seconds.
Reggie was the definition of clutch. Wow was he awesome.
You might be thinking of the Plano East vs. John Tyler playoff game in Texas from 1994. Plano East was down 41-17 with 3 minutes left. They scored four touchdowns by recovering three onside kicks. Then they kicked off with about 10 seconds left, which was returned for a touchdown.
Practice, the league would probably be upset if a team was clearly making zero effort with more than a few seconds left, and most players do like to play so why not?
Sometime (this is most obvious in hockey, but in basketball and football, too), there’s a timespan where one team is behind and getting very short on time, so they’ll start making fast, high-risk plays (lots of quick three-pointers in basketball, pulling the goalie in hockey, etc.), but at somepoint they realize the deficit is too great and switch back to regular play – they know they won’t win, but would rather play out the end in a more normal way.