Within that crowd of viewers, there were inevitably plenty of high schoolers in the process of deciding which colleges they would apply to.

After the game, Velda Rooker, the interim dean of enrollment services at Auburn, reached out to her counterparts at LSU and Florida, two fellow SEC schools that had won national titles in recent years, so she wasn’t surprised when the school’s number of applicants increased 16 percent in 2011.

Even Oregon, the team that lost to Auburn, received more applications in 2011, a 10 percent increase, thanks to the exposure and enthusiasm that comes with playing at the highest level.

“That season, that game, that experience, took what was already a well-known brand and just sort of put it on steroids,” said Roger Thompson, the vice president for student services and enrollment management at Oregon.