A Colorful Ending to Blue-Gray : College football: Twenty-eight points scored in final quarter of Blue’s 38-27 win. Joe Aska, blind in one eye, is named MVP.

Quarterbacks were catching touchdown passes and points were racked up at a record pace. And when it was over, a running back born in the Virgin Islands, blind in one eye, walked away with the MVP award.

The Blue-Gray game, often a dreary affair dominated by defense, turned into a celebration of offense on Christmas Day. The teams combined for 738 yards and set a record for total points in the Blue’s 38-27 victory.

“I hadn’t expected to do so much, but I’m happy I did,” said Joe Aska, a small-college star at Central Oklahoma who began the game sulking on the bench but wound up as the Blue’s top player. “I’m not used to sitting on the sideline and I was getting mad when I didn’t start. But I told myself, ‘Settle down, everybody is going to play.’ ”

He wound up rushing for a game-high 69 yards, including two touchdowns, and set up the winning score with a 35-yard run--not to mention an 18-yard pass reception and a 46-yard kickoff return, both key plays in a fourth quarter in which 28 points were scored.

The Blue took the opening kickoff and went 70 yards for a touchdown--a precursor of things to come. The Gray dipped into its bag of tricks for a 10-yard touchdown pass in which Eastern Kentucky quarterback John Sacca pitched the ball on an apparent sweep to Georgia running back Terrell Davis, who stopped suddenly and passed it to Sacca.

Aska, one of the top players in NCAA Division II, came to Montgomery with lingering doubts about his ability because he is blind in his right eye--the result of a childhood shooting accident.

Aska caught two passes, including a difficult, twisting 18-yard grab that set up his own one-yard touchdown run to put the Blue ahead, 24-20, with 12:12 remaining in what turned out to be a wild fourth quarter.

The Gray, which piled up 399 yards of offense, marched right back down the field for a one-yard touchdown by Auburn’s Joe Frazier just 1:39 later to regain the lead, 27-24. The Blue responded, needing only 1:54 to go back the other way. Aska returned the kickoff 46 yards to midfield--he had 86 yards on three returns--then nearly took it the rest of the way with his 35-yard run.

UCLA’s Wayne Cook completed a five-yard touchdown pass to Stanford’s Tony Cline, putting the Blue ahead to stay, 31-27.