Holding the South Carolina offense to only a field goal in the second half, Auburn won its second SEC Championship game 56-17.
With Auburn ranked No. 1 in the BCS poll, a trip to the national championship in Glendale, Ariz., is all but guaranteed.
Coach Gene Chizik said the win is going to take time to sink in.
"I told our team before the game this would be our finest hour if they finished," Chizik said. "We came out here and finished the game. I can't tell you how proud I am of this team."
With a smile and praise to God, quarterback Cam Newton accepted the MVP trophy for the game.
"I want to thank God for blessing me, my family, this team and this coaching staff," Newton said. "There are some resilient guys on this team. Without them, I wouldn't have been able to do what I did."
Newton threw for four touchdowns and ran two himself, making him the second player in NCAA history to score 20 passing touchdowns as well as 20 rushing touchdowns.
Chizik said Newton is the best college football player he has ever seen.
""When you look at the 13-game span, I've never seen anything like it," Chizik said. "It's running the ball, it's throwing the ball and usually great quarterbacks do one or the other better. What God has blessed Cameron with is the ability to be really, really good at both."
Auburn never trailed the Gamecocks, and was tied for only four minutes.
The Tigers totaled 589 yards of offense, the seventh time this season they have done so.
"They just flat-out beat us up and down the field offensively and defensively," said Patrick DiMarco, South Carolina fullback. "They played much better than we did."
Junior wide receiver Darvin Adams broke a few records himself.
He caught an SEC Championship record with seven grabs for 217 yards in the first half alone, including a 51-yard hail-Mary touchdown pass in the final seconds of the half.
"Darvin is the definition of a complete football player," Newton said. "He blocks, he catches and whatever coach asks him to do, he's willing to do it."
Younger players also made an impact in the Tiger's championship win.
Sophomore cornerback T'Sharvan Bell intercepted a South Carolina pass and ran the ball 10 yards back for a touchdown.
Bell also took part in nine tackles, six of which were solo tackles.
"In the last two games (Bell)made two huge plays for us that everybody could see, but there's a lot of plays he's made behind the scenes that nobody would probably notice," Chizik said. "He's made an impact for our defense and really proud of the way he's come on and really helped our defense in the last month."
Auburn will have to wait until tomorrow night for confirmation of its trip to the BCS national championship game.
Although many have doubted his team's success, Chizik said he's been confident for a while.
"I don't know what defining moment was the exact one in this season that maybe gave me the feeling that we would be able to be in Arizona," Chizik said. "I think it was probably an accumulation of moments, but I know that as the season went on, as I said earlier, we knew we had a chance."
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