Great Santino Shocks Us All With Last Second, Game Winning TD Pass

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Santino Marruci, a cross-pollination of Sylvester Stallone in “Rocky 1,” Al Pacino as Michael Corleone in “Godfather II,” and Tony Manero in “Saturday Night Fever,” didn’t lead Wake Forest to a national championship last night, nor win the Heisman Trophy, nor pass for 400 yards – all of which I rather recklessly predicted would happen in a blog yesterday morning before his team took on Pitt last night.

But he did something possibly more amazing.

He resurrected his team from certain defeat/death, threw down the center of the field a perfect spiral to his teammate, Cam Hite, for a 13-yard, game-winning touchdown with less than 12 seconds to play, got carried off the field by his teammates after the 21-17 victory, and solidified himself forever in Wake Forest and Italian historic lore as The Great Santino. Italian dinners should be served in the Wake Forest student cafeteria, known as The Pitt, every day for the rest of the football season.

Years from now Wake Forest football fans who hung around to see the grand finale at Allegacy Field last night will still be regaling anyone who will listen about one night when a third-string quarterback, starting for the first time in his three years on the team, threw a game-ending interception with 40 seconds left down 17-14, sending many fans to exits feeling despondent about a fourth straight loss.

Then somehow in a fit of dire desperation interspersed with wide-eyed opportunism, hit Ke’Shawn Williams for a slant pass and run over the middle for 26 yards with 20 seconds left to the 13-yard line. Then he delivered the strike to Hite who lunged over the endzone for the go-ahead score to send University of Pittsburgh home, a team none of us are fond of after faking injuries against us in the ACC championship two years ago, back to where they came from. Those of us who stayed couldn’t believe what we witnessed.

A third-stringer, a guy whose Wake Forest football career has been an adventurous journey and odyssey that he described as “loopity loops,” playing multiple other positions such as safety and running back in practices but not getting much playing time at any of these positions, a guy who Friday night wasn’t even known to be the starter for the game publicly so Pitt wouldn’t know, a guy who has spent a lot of time on the bench, most of his time, well, almost every minute of his time, on the sidelines, got on the field and did the unthinkable, saving Wake Forest’s football season from careening into a ditch.

You saw the movie “Rudy” when they carried the walk-on player off the field after he finally got in a game for Notre Dame. Good movie. But what the Great Santino did last night was more stunning, dramatic, and real than anything Rudy or any other heroic movie character has ever done.

He won. In real life.

Amazingly. Dramatically. Suddenly.

It was almost absurd.

He strutted into the press room afterward, eye black smudged on his cheeks, the most sudden star of any college football player in America yesterday or this season or perhaps any others. Watch this:

“We won the game,” he said. “I don’t care if I throw five interceptions or five touchdowns. It doesn’t make a difference to me as long as we win the football game.”

Asked how the experience ranked among his all-time sports experiences, he said: “Oh, it’s number 1, are you kidding? I did have a big Pop Warner football one time. But this is a lot, a much bigger stage.”

The Great Santino got put on center stage last night because the first two quarterbacks got hurt. We all thought he basically figured he’d lost the game by throwing an interception in the last minute. But he came back and made the throw of the season in the college football comeback of the season to grab victory from a loss that was absolutely sure to happen – until it wasn’t.

To his tight end, Hite, whom he hadn’t passed to the entire game. Asked if the plan was to throw over the middle, coach Dave Clawson said: “I was surprised he threw the football to the tight end because we called that play before and he just automatically threw it to the outside guy. The kid has some mental toughness to him, that’s for sure. Not just for this game but for his career.”

The Great Santino explained that he had thrown the ball to the outside three times before so the defense knew he was trying to get it out there. “But we got the look we wanted. Our playmakers will make plays so I just had to give Cam a chance.”

Are you kidding? This feels like a loopity loop moment. And it was.

So in the most pressure-packed moment, The Great Santino double-crossed the Pitt defense, got them expecting one play then executed another.

What an actor. But this wasn’t a movie.

This was real life.

He threw a sharp spiral to a well-covered Hite, leading him into the endzone.

“It’s a great moment and I’ll never forget it,” said Clawson. “We’ve had some great wins here. But I don’t know if I’ve ever been more proud of our football team. We’re always trying to create a moment. And we created a moment tonight those guys will never forget.”

Will any of us ever see a story unfold like this one ever again in a Wake Forest football game? Will a third-stringer ascend from just another guy heaving a game-destroying interception to a game-winning touchdown as the clock runs out? Will any of us ever witness a team lose the game three different times late in the fourth quarter and yet somehow win?

Will that person who pulled off the shocking ending look like Rocky, Michael Corleone, and Tony Manero?

The answer to all your questions is “no.”

No movie has ever been this compelling, far-fetched, and predictable in its impossible ending where the underdog overcomes all the odds and becomes an instant hero.

The Great Santino accomplished all of this in real life. Right now, just a few hours later, it’s still not believable that what happened really happened.

It probably never will be.