Hail, yes. And no.

 You love college football because it's the home office for Stuff Happens, like tiny Centre College beating mighty Harvard back in the ancient days, and Notre Dame playing to ties in not one but two Games of the Century (Army in 1946; Michigan State in 1966).  Also, the hero quotient is very high.

Nebraska's Johnny Rodgers with the punt return against Oklahoma in 1971. Billy Cannon's punt return against Ole Miss on Halloween night in 1959. And all those Hail Marys -- from Colorado quarterback Kordell Stewart's 64-yard throw to beat Michigan in the Big House in 1994, to the most famous of all:  Doug Flutie-to-Gerard Phelan as Boston College stunned Miami in 1984.

The Hail Mary is a straight-out-of-your-backside deal that's also a sort of product stamp for the college game, and we love it so. It's the kind of desperation that makes college football so endearing, embodying as it does the child-like faith of alums that somehow the dear alma mater will find a way, whether it's through a Hail Mary that works or one that - whew - doesn't.

Yesterday we got one of each flavor.

In South Bend, the echoes waited until the final seconds to awaken, as Notre Dame thrashed around against a Cal team that returned only eight starters from a 5-7 campaign last year. By the time the clock got skinny the Irish were only up a score, 24-17, and Cal quarterback Jack Plummer was leaving it to the gods with a desperate heave.

For a couple of seconds, Plummer's prayer pinballed off a thicket of hands in the end zone, and for a heart-stopping instant a Golden Bear had his mitts on it. Then the ball hit the ground, and Notre Dame head coach Marcus Freeman finally had his first W.

Whew.

Meanwhile, against the glorious backdrop of the Blue Ridge in western North Carolina ...

Well. Appalachian State did this.

It was Stewart-to-Michael Westbrook and Flutie-to-Phelan all over again, and it was one more piece of evidence that God must have done his undergrad work at App State. First the Mountaineers go out to Texas A&M and knock the swagger out of the Aggies; then they come back home and shock Troy with a little manna from heaven.

Hail, no, in South Bend. Hail, yes, in God's country.

Hail college football, either way.