Missouri’s botched PAT attempt and Wyoming’s butter-fingered return in the second quarter of the Tigers’ 40-13 victory last week is described by notable authors, mostly dead ones.

Obscured beneath a cloak of smoke, the epic journey began. The great warrior whose foot rained thunder across Dixie could not grasp the projectile that sprang from betwixt the legs of his noble comrade. Undaunted, he set out on a path to turn that misfortune into a grander glory worthy of the two points that the football gods, in their wisdom, had attached to the deed. Alas, he could not complete the charge and was laid low, leaving the prized possession on the battlefield.

--Grantland Rice

Call him Fatony.

--Herman Melville

Fireworks to the right of them,

Fireworks to the left of them,

Fireworks behind them,

A giant crane in front of them.

Boldly the Wyoming Cowboys advance,

Half a yard, half a yard,

Half a yard they stumble.

Their’s was not to reason why,

Their’s was just to scoop and fumble.

--Alfred Tennyson

Despite the best efforts of well-meaning players, the ball followed its own uncharted path down the field. As the thick smoke obscured the ball’s unpredictable behavior, the 22 men in pursuit relied upon the blue Igloo cooler atop the looming construction crane as their lodestar.

--Anonymous

At the touch of leather, he gasped. He was a linebacker, accustomed to the sweet sting of a forearm shiver, not the knobby surface of the spheroid he now caressed. Suddenly, he was pawed at from all sides by masked men in black spandex with bulging biceps and supple buttocks. He did not remember his safe word. He did not care to remember. Suddenly, surprising even himself, he released.

--E.L. James

The ball(1) fluttered through the air(2).

(1) A Nike Vapor One model inflated to a level between 12.5 and 13.5 PSI.

(2) By volume, the air on this night contained 72.03 percent nitrogen, 20.97 percent oxygen, 0.95 percent argon, 0.05 percent carbon dioxide and a stunning 6 percent sulfur dioxide, as the fireworks’ smoke residue could not escape the damp atmosphere, creating a brief weather event Missouri players almost unanimously described as “a disorienting hail storm of miniature soft-boiled rotten eggs.”

--David Foster Wallace

The man who picked up the rolling ball at midfield, like all men, could depend on only himself. If he expected assistance, he was mistaken. He threw the ball like a coward and was pummeled. He got what he deserved.

--Ayn Rand

He who gazes too long into the south end zone construction project finds that the south end zone construction project also gazes into him, leaving a smoky hole where a football once was.

--Friedrich Nietzsche