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it over the head of a defender. Randall jumped for it, but the ball glanced off his fingertips and landed right in free safety Tony Driver’s hands. He ran the interception back to the five yard line. Our defense held, but the Irish kicked a field goal and took the lead, 31–30.
    I was in shock. Because of my mistake, we had gone from being one play away from victory to being behind. Even if I hadn’t completed the pass, we would have punted, and our defense would have had a chance for a stop. Now we were losing. And it was my fault.
    The game wasn’t over yet, though. We had less than a minute to get into field goal range, and our offense had been clicking the whole game. We still had a chance. We threw a pass on first down, but it fell incomplete. Then lightning struck again. On second down, I threw the ball a little high, and it bounced off my receiver’s fingertips. Another interception. Game over.
    I knelt down on the field, unable to believe what had just happened. I had thrown two interceptions in the last two minutes, erasing the good play of the whole game. I headed into the locker room, still stunned, and sat at my locker. I looked around at the seniors and watched as tears ran from their eyes. We had worked so hard, and now here I was, the sophomore quarterback in his fourth start who had just lost the game for everybody. The first win on Notre Dame territory in twenty-five years had been in our grasp, and I had let everyone down. I felt awful.
    I started wondering whether I was fit to play at Purdue. Do I belong here? Can I compete at this level? Fortunately I had friends who knew what I needed. That night I went out to eat with my two roommates, Ben Smith and Jason Loerzel. Jason was from Park Ridge, Illinois, and played linebacker. Ben was a quarterback from Nebraska who switched to free safety when he came to Purdue. We all came in during the same year and formed a bond, a brotherhood. We were from very different backgrounds and different parts of the country, but we were like glue.
    Jason and Ben insisted we go to C Ray’s, a local restaurant with the best chicken wings in town. “You’re pretty miserable to be around right now,” they said. “Let’s order up some C Ray’s wings, and we’ll relax and let you vent.”
    That’s what we did. Even though I was down, the wings were good. Still, I had trouble letting go of those last two minutes. I knew I was the reason we had lost. It’s one thing to start well, but you have to finish—you have to follow through. You have to be able to win the big one and deliver when the game is on the line. But as we talked through the feelings, I realized that for fifty-eight minutes in the biggest game of my life, I’d played some of my best football. There was so much pressure to perform in that game. I hadn’t finished well, but for fifty-eight minutes I’d showed I belonged on that field. That gave me confidence. The glass was half full. Find the positive out of every negative. That is what I always tried to do.
    Jason and Ben helped get me out of my funk and focus on the next game, which was Minnesota at home. It was a misty day—foggy to the point where you almost couldn’t see the field from the press box. For home games the team stayed at the hotel in the Union. We’d get up in the morning and walk about a half mile to the stadium as a team. To everybody else that day may have seemed dreary, but for me it felt like there was energy in the air. It felt like a fresh start, and the mist was bringing in a brand-new opportunity. I was going to show people what I had inside. I wasn’t going to let the last two minutes of the Notre Dame game wreck my future.
    That dinner at C Ray’s was a proverbial fork in the road for me. I realized I could focus on my mistakes and feel sorry for myself, or I could learn from those mistakes and use them as motivation to come back stronger. Under pressure, would I fold and disappear, or would I show everyone that when