Kansas Football 2007: Which game was the best to experience?

The 2007 football season was the arguably the greatest in Kansas history, when the team went 12-1 and won the Orange Bowl. 10 years later, the football program is again hoping to make an unlikely run to relevance in the college football landscape. Before we turn toward the upcoming season, we take a look back at the season where most of our football dreams came true. The entire SB Nation network is looking back at that season, and we are buying in fully, with lots of content coming to you the rest of this week to commemorate that wild season.

Being a fan of any team is all about the experience. We live and die with our teams. Their victories become ours. Their shortcomings can be a personal affront. Our fandom is defined not just by the games we witness, but also by the thoughts, feelings, emotions and experiences that surround those games.

To help in remembering the insanity that was 2007, I asked our contributors (both current and former) a series of questions meant to explore their memories and impressions from that time frame. This is the third in a series of 7 articles, with each exploring a different question.

Check out our answers, and then share your answer below in the comments.

Which game was your favorite to experience as a fan?

dnoll5: November 3, 2007. Kansas 76, Nebraska 39. It may never get any better than that. I went to a bar in my neighborhood of Kansas City with some of my friends (some were KU fans and others were fans of other teams), but as we watched it, everyone was amazed. It was simply incredible. Thirty plus years of frustration with those clowns up north all came pouring out in that one game at Memorial Stadium.

Winmore: It was that K-State game, without a doubt. The fall of ‘07 was my final semester at KU, and I was also working in Topeka, Kansas at the time. In Topeka I was surrounded by K-State fans. And they were all taking their shots at the ‘Hawks saying they loaded their schedule with creampuffs. The trash talking ramped up significantly the week before the Wildcats hosted the ‘Hawks in Manhattan. I ended up betting my supervisor, a K-State alumnus, 100 bucks that the Jayhawks would win that game. I even went to his house to watch it with him and a group of K-State friends. After Reesing threw a pick on KU’s first offensive possession and then Jordy Nelson burned Aqib Talib on a 68 yard catch and touchdown, I was thinking, “God damn it…” But the ‘Hawks rallied and played fantastic down the stretch, answering every one of K-State’s scores before taking complete control of the game midway through the fourth with two scores before Talib picked off Josh Freeman’s prayer to seal the victory. I got a hundred bucks and a room full of sad Wildcat fans.

Mike.Plank: I will also say the K-State game. I also watched that game with K-State fans, and some of you will not believe how pissed off they were at the end. I just sat there with a big goofy grin on my face and soaked in all in. The Nebraska game would have got my vote had they hung 100 on them, which I maintain to this day they could have done.

David: The Nebraska game. I grew up a Husker fan and still root for them to this day, but losing to NU every damn year was not fun with a family full of Huskers. Yeah, we'd already snapped the streak two years before, but this was a bludgeoning. It was like the team was taking out all my frustrations for me.

KU Grad 08: I loved all the games already mentioned, but come on… the freaking Orange Bowl. I went down with my girlfriend (who is now my wife) and watched Kansas beat a known national program (Virginia Tech) and win a BCS game. It was surreal. It also was nice vindication for all the shit talking mU fans and others had done. Like Pat Forde’s comments on ESPN on how the game should be on Comedy Central since it was such a joke. Oops.

Andy Mitts: While I absolutely hated the outcome, I think I had the greatest experience watching that game in Arrowhead. The enormity of the implications kicked it up a notch, and the atmosphere came through on the broadcast to hype me up even more. And when you add in the highs and lows that came with falling behind early but making a furious rally that fell just short, I was exhilarated and crushed at the same time.