The kick sails through the uprights and an entire state goes bananas.
The UConn Huskies, a Division I team for about a decade, had somehow found its way to a BCS bowl, the pinnacle of college football.
All is right in the world, right, Husky fans?
Not so fast.
The most sobering part of UConn's unexpected berth in the January 1 Fiesta Bowl should be its odds of winning - pretty slim, given it is a 17-point underdog against perennial power Oklahoma.
But it looks like the bowl experience will be a financial albatross for UConn, a public university that, like many, has faced financial struggles in recent years thanks to the weak economy.
Welcome to big-time college athletics, where gridiron glory and financial prosperity don't always match up.
As the New Haven Register reports, the University of Connecticut stands to lose money on the deal, even with a guaranteed $2.5 million payment for making the bowl game.
The main culprits here are geography, ticket sales, and perhaps, a fan base reluctant to travel across the country to watch a game that may get out of hand quickly.
Universities headed to bowl games are routinely obligated to buy large chunks of game tickets and hotel rooms. In UConn's case, it is on the hook for 17,500 game tickets - of which it has sold about 4,000 so far - and 550 hotel rooms.
It's a long way from Storrs, CT to Phoenix. The weather's better, for sure, but the airline tickets are costly.
So ticket sales lag.
And the university's expenses are many. Factor in the cost of transporting a team, cheerleaders, band, administrators and the like all the way across the country, and you've got problems.
In North Carolina, the local teams are in better situations.
N.C. State takes on West Virginia in the Champs Sports Bowl Dec. 28. Tickets are selling briskly and campus officials expect to sell all 13,500 they were alloted.
And UNC has already sold all 10,000 of its tickets for the Dec. 30 Music City Bowl against Tennessee.
Here's another financial football sob story: The University of Nevada, which cost itself a cool million bucks by upsetting Boise State in the last game of the regular season. Yes, this is another case of a team costing itself a bunch of money by succeeding on the field.
Try to follow along:
Boise State was the nation's darling all season long, David to the many Goliaths from major football conferences like the SEC.
Undefeated heading into its final game against Nevada, it needed only to win to make a BCS bowl and snare $10 million that would be shared among the rest of the teams in the Western Athletic Conference.
Teams like Nevada.
But Nevada pulled the upset, jettisoning Boise State from a BCS bowl and with it, losing the estimated $1 million it would have netted simply by being in the same conference as a team having a great season.
Whoops.
