REMEMBER WHEN NDSU SQUEEZED THE LIFE OUT OF K-STATE

There should be an entire field of academic inquiry devoted to losing games, or at least the various degrees to which ways of losing can madden, insanify, or otherwise derange horrified onlookers.

For example: How bad, quantifiably, was it to watch this as a Kansas State fan? With a four-point lead on the road, all K-State needs to do to preserve a narrow lead over the best team in FCS is take a vast gulf of eight minutes, get a stop, and then run out the clock. That's all they need to do. That's all they need to do here. They need to stop a team starting on their own 20 yard line, on the road, with very little ability to make a big play or stretch the field, and they win this game.

OH DEAR READER THAT IS NOT WHAT HAPPENS HERE. The title is "Greatest Drive in NDSU History" sure, but remember that in all competitive situations there are two narratives: one where you win, and one where you are K-State helpless beneath a boot they did not anticipate viewing from the floor.

This is the epitome of anodyne brutality: 18 plays, 80 yards, all done at a leisurely, modest 4.4 yards per play clip, all done with absolutely zero hustle or hurry. North Dakota State appears to be holding a light scrimmage just after offensive install. We can't verify this, but if we told you their offensive line stops and has a light tea service at the three minute mark, you'd believe it, yes? You would, and should.

There are ways to lose and ways to really, really lose. There's the Kick Six, and the Miracle at Michigan, and the bang-bang haymakers Auburn and Florida State threw at each other in the final moments of the 2014 national title game, and every other storied tale of terror ending in defeat. This, though: this might be the worst, getting slowly chiseled to pieces on your own field by an FCS team you can't even be too mad at, because they do happen to be really good, and not just some bolt of lightning sent randomly to humiliate your program?

It's bad--specifically the kind of bad where you watch your house get slowly incinerated by a lava flow creeping at 0.5 miles per hour. Bill Snyder knows what we're talking about, and has a deed in Latin for a destroyed vacation house in Pompeii to prove it.