A 47-yard field goal is a small piece of geometry. Sandell's moved a No. 1 ranking on Saturday.

His kick sealed Oklahoma's 27-24 win over Texas in Dallas, and the Sooners got there after offensive struggles that the Guardian's account does not bother to hide. They did not need a good afternoon. They needed one good second, and a kicker who treated the pressure like a form to be filled in. Texas, ranked first in the country, spent the rest of the evening learning that a poll position is a rental and the landlord is a man with a right foot.

For the Longhorns, the cost lands in the one place a ranking is actually spent. A No. 1 team that loses to its oldest rival, at the neutral site where the rivalry has lived for generations, does not get a gentle week. It gets a Sunday of voters rewriting their ballots, and the arithmetic of a three-point margin follows it all the way to December.

The night did not calm down. Kentucky went to overtime with No. 10 LSU, and quarterback Kenneth Minchey ran in the 2-point conversion that made it 35-34. Nobody kicked for the tie. They went for the win and got it. That is two ranked teams beaten on a single decision at the margin, in one weekend, in the same conference footprint that Texas and Oklahoma joined only recently.

The follow-the-capital part is short. The SEC bought Texas and Oklahoma largely so that Saturdays like this one would exist, rivalry games with national stakes and a broadcast window to match. It got a No. 1 team felled in the first half of October. The television partners paid for drama, and a field goal delivered it at no extra charge.

Closer to my own followed list, Vanderbilt lost 52-17 to Ole Miss on Sunday, Hong Kong time. Arkansas visits Nashville on October 18, which is a week to find a kicker.

Texas, meanwhile, now has a season-long reminder in the form of a 47-yard line it did not stop.