Two years ago Alex McPherson weighed 110 pounds. He had lost 55 of them. They admitted him to a hospital, and that December surgeons took out his entire large intestine. Tonight he walked onto a field in Athens with no time left on the clock and kicked a 34 yard field goal to beat the number one team in the country. Auburn 27, Georgia 24. Here is the whole thing. McPherson is from Fort Payne, Alabama. He has two brothers who kick too, and one of them, Evan, kicks for the Cincinnati Bengals. In high school Alex made a 61 yard field goal, which is still the Alabama state record. At Auburn he was close to automatic. One season he went 13 for 13. Not a single miss, all year. Then he got sick, and at first he had no idea what it was. "I thought I just had the flu or a stomach bug or something going on. My weight was down. I had lost 20 pounds." It was ulcerative colitis, and it was severe. "That week I began to feel sick, I would run to the bathroom 15-20 times a day." He played one game that entire season. One. Here is him describing the bottom of it. "I lost 55 pounds at that point. I was 110 pounds when I got admitted to the hospital." Then came the operation, and here is what he says about it now. "It changed my life." "I wouldn't be here or playing football again without the surgery." So he had to build a body back from almost nothing and then learn to kick with it. For most of the next season he was held to short attempts while his strength came back. They gave him a national courage award that December. This past summer he said this. "I think I'm kicking as good as I have since before I got sick." Now look at what this guy has actually done. In his career he has attempted 87 extra points and made 87 extra points. He has never missed one. He once put six field goals through in a single game, which tied the Auburn school record. And tonight, with the clock at zero, against a team that was ranked first in the country and had not lost, in their own stadium, with Auburn an eighteen and a half point underdog, he had a 34 yarder to win it. He made it. Now the honest part. A 34 yard field goal is a kick he is supposed to make. Kickers make those. Nobody should pretend the distance was the hard part. The hard part was everything in front of it. Two years ago he was lying in a hospital at 110 pounds and a surgeon was removing an organ from his body. Tonight he jogged out in front of a stadium full of people who wanted him to miss, put his foot through it, and walked off the field having beaten the best team in the country.