Holiday Bowl: The Truth About Chris Jessie

According to ASU's head coach Dennis Erickson, Chris Jessie's Holiday Bowl boner "was one of the team's few bright spots."

Erickson added, "In my 35 or 40 years in college football...that's the most unusual play I have ever seen."

The young man who got the most TV time during this year's four hour and 20 minute Holiday Bowl was personally responsible for putting the fighting spirit back in the hearts of the Sun Devils.

Jessie completely shifted the momentum of the game two minutes into the second quarter.  With ASU down by 21 at the end of the first, the Sun Devils really needed a big play, and Jessie delivered.

Jessie was a virtual no-name coming into the Holiday Bowl.  But during the 12-minute discussion on the field about his play, Chris Jessie became an instant phenomenon.

The mystery surrounding this young man took nearly 20 minutes to resolve, even in the most information-rich era in the history of man.

Questions about his name, his position, and his intelligence sprang up in chat rooms, blogs, and wikis all over the Internet.  On Longhorn fan sites and sports gambling sites, there were strong accusations about the motive and intent behind his play.

There were even a disturbing number of people trying to locate personal information on Chris just to exact some measure of revenge.  Jessie was suddenly famous for all the wrong reasons.

When Chris' name was first revealed, I Googled him.  He didn't show up anywhere in the first eight pages of "Chris Jessie" links.  One minute later, in the News search on Google, he showed up five times on the first page of links. 

30 seconds after that (90 seconds after his name was first shared), Jessie's name was linked to all but one news article on the first News search page and all of the second page links.

By the fourth minute after his name was leaked on a popular Longhorns blog site, Jessie owned every News article associated with "Chris Jessie" on the first five pages of Google's search results.

And, for some reason, nepotism wasn't mentioned in any of the links despite the obvious connection to Texas head coach Mack Brown.

Chris Jessie is Mack Brown's step son. 

Chris Jessie is on Mack's operations staff under Cleve Bryant. Chris Jessie helps coordinate the team's travel. Chris Jessie was on the field (along with several other staff members) while a play was still in progress.

Jessie explained what happened during his postgame interview.

"It was just natural instinct.  I thought it was a forward pass.  I was looking at the ball being thrown and I was waiting for a grounding penalty.  When I realized that the ball was in play, I jumped back."

Jessie went on to assert that he did not touch the ball while it was in play.

"I didn't touch it. I didn't touch it. The focus shouldn't be on me."

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