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There’s major consternation in the realm of college football. No, it’s not that Miami became #1 by squeaking by a Florida State team that had a losing record in the ACC. At home. In double overtime. After two controversial calls went the Canes’ way in that second overtime. Oh, and they haven’t played a ranked team yet. There are, by the way, three undefeated teams—BYU (more on them in a moment), Texas Tech, and UCLA—that have a win against a ranked opponent.
Curmie is more than a little baffled, but that’s not the
subject of this essay. For the second
time (actually the third: but the other one was at the FCS level) already this season, there’s a concern about when a game
actually ended. You will recall, Gentle
Reader, that back on September 5, millions of viewers saw the clock go to zero
while a pass was still in the air, thereby seemingly clinching a major upset
for the Western Michigan Broncos over the Michigan Wolverines. But there was a review, and some mystical
clock that only the chosen few are allowed to gaze upon showed Michigan still
had a second left.
Of course, they scored on the next play, winning the game in
the minds of literally no one except the referees and Michigan fans. Even the NCAA’s Division I
Football Bowl Subdivision Oversight Committee said that “instant replay protocols were not followed in the contest’s
second-to-last play. Had the protocols been followed, the outcome of the game
would have been different.” They
couldn’t overturn the game result, but everyone whose favorite colors are
anything but maize and blue knows what happened.
Curmie wrote about the whole business on the 20th, arguing that literally everyone—both teams, the Big 10, NBC, the
NCAA—lost, one way or another. And now,
for the second time in six weeks—and indeed for the second time in Curmie’s
memory of over 60 years of watching college football—we have a replay by… uh…
not having a replay.
This time, the game was between the #2 Notre Dame Fighting
Irish and the #8 BYU Cougars. BYU scored
a touchdown with less than two minutes remaining to take the lead, 28-24, but
Notre Dame was driving down the field to try to regain the lead. They drove 67 yards to the BYU 8 with four
seconds left on the clock. Irish
quarterback CJ Carr took a shotgun snap, rolled out to his right, and tried to
hit Jaden Greathouse in the endzone. The
pass was incomplete, and the game was over, with the Cougars getting a big win. Fans stormed the field, and there was great
rejoicing in Provo.
There’s a problem, though.
The headline of an article by Mike Florio on the nbcsports
site reads, “Notre Dame gets screwed, twice, on ‘final’ play at BYU.” Unfortunately, that’s an accurate
description. Yes, BYU cornerback Evan Johnson
got away with pretty obvious pass interference in the endzone. And yes, there was still one second left on
the clock when the pass hit the ground, as you can see in the photo above. That’s the stadium clock in the background;
ESPN’s clock shows the same thing. If
the refs get either call right, Notre Dame has one more chance. The only question is whether it would be from
the 2 yard line (if the penalty is called) or the 8 (if it isn’t).
OK, the pass interference call, or rather the lack of one,
was a judgment call: pretty incompetent judgment, but judgment all the
same. There’s pressure to have the refs
not interfere late in a close game when calling a penalty could have a direct
effect on the outcome. But, of course,
failing to call a penalty has a similar result.
Too often, the go-to motto of “let them play” slides into, well, “let
them cheat.”
The more serious concern is the clock situation, because
that is absolutely objective. And we’re
not talking about some mysterious “other clock” here. The problem is that no one even bothered to
check: not the referee on the field, not the guys in the replay booth, not the
folks at the Big 12 Conference official Replay Operations Center in Texas. The ESPN announcers both thought that pass
interference should have been called, but neither bothered to notice that the very replay they were showing clearly indicated that there was, or should have been, still a second
remaining.
No one asked a question about either the clock or the
non-call at the post-game interview. Even Notre Dame coach Marcus Freeman didn’t
question the clock business, either, although he apparently wanted to know why
there was no penalty flag. To his
credit, however, he refused to “put blame on somebody else.”
It was, in short, a confluence of incompetence of staggering
proportions. It was “embarrassing for
all officiating” and a “ridiculous miss,” as rules analyst Mike Pereira put it. Let’s face it, if Curmie, who
wanted BYU to win, ends up agreeing with the likes of Pereira and Matt Austin (both
of whom he thinks are bozos) that Notre Dame got hosed, it looks pretty
bad. The Big 12 issued a statement confirming that yes, they fucked up. (They
use slightly different language.) “The
conference will conduct a complete review of its end-of-game officiating
process in advance of next week's games.”
In the future, of course. Not
now.
There’s a distinct possibility, of course, that time really
should have expired. It doesn’t seem
likely that Carr could wait for a shotgun snap, roll out a couple of steps, and
throw the ball over 20 yards—not a “seed” or a “laser,” or any of those other
metaphors for speed—and have the ball hit the ground in less than four
seconds. Perhaps the clock didn’t start
on time, etc., etc. The problem is the
lack of review. Well, and the egregious
lack of a penalty call.
There will inevitably be comparisons to that game in Ann Arbor six weeks earlier. Let’s start with differences. First, whereas the earlier game was indeed decided by the addition of the extra second, this one only might have been. If the pass interference had been called, Notre Dame would have had one play from the 2 yard line. Whether they would have converted is pretty much a 50/50 proposition. For reference, we can look at the percentage of 2-point conversions successfully completed: 45.8%. That’s from the 3 yard line, so one might guess that the likelihood of a touchdown would go from just below even from the 3 to just above from the 2. Had the ball been marked at the 8, the likelihood would be lower, but certainly not zero. If Michigan can score from the 49, Notre Dame can score from the 8.
Another difference is the prospect for significance in the
post-season. Neither game was a league
contest, so no one moves up or down in the conference standing depending on the
outcome, but Notre Dame/BYU could have significant implications. It’s unlikely that the Wolverines will go
exactly 2-4 in their remaining games or that the Broncos will go 1-5: in other
words, that the outcome of that game will affect bowl eligibility. Michigan won’t make the playoffs, anyway, and
if Western Michigan runs the table from here on out, they’re definitely going
to be in consideration as the Group of 5 (there are actually six of those conferences
now, but who’s counting?) representative.
On the other hand, the voters who determine the rankings
tend to be both lazy and stupid (see elevating Miami to #1 after a narrow and
lucky home win against a mediocre opponent), so Notre Dame dropped five places
this week for a road loss to a top-10 team they should have had one more chance
to beat. If you’re not in the SEC, two
losses put you in jeopardy of dropping out of the playoffs, and three are
pretty much a guarantee you’ll have to settle for the Mrs. Lovett’s Meat Pies
Bowl in Duluth in late December.
Notre Dame still has to play two ranked teams, Miami and SMU
(both at home); BYU has a road game against top-10 and currently undefeated
Utah and, assuming they take care of business, a Big 12 championship game. Plus, of course, there’s the possibility of a
big upset. But there’s also the
possibility of a first-round bye, the difference between playing at home or on
the road, etc.
The similarities between the two games in question are
concerning, however. In both cases, the refs’
decisions benefitted the home team, which was also the team from the same
conference as the refs. The latter point
in particular matters. Yes, it’s easier
to keep the home fans happy, but the possibility of pressure to help the
conference’s representative is difficult to ignore. It’s good for the Big 10 if Michigan wins;
it’s good for the Big 12 if BYU wins. (It’s
also good for the ACC if their best team doesn’t lose at home to a team that
very well might not qualify for the postseason at all.)
Curmie is not suggesting malfeasance as the basis for some
pretty strange calls, but phrases like “Caesar’s wife” and “appearance of
impropriety” do come to mind. Some folks
on Reddit and similar sites remind us of the presence of big-money gambling and
hint at a connection to game-time decisions.
Again, Curmie makes no accusations, but he does partially raise an eyebrow.
It’s certainly time the NCAA stepped in to ensure that games
end neither before nor after they should.
Curmie has long believed that the NCAA is second only to the Trump
administration as the perfect storm of corruption and incompetence, but they’re
what we’ve got. Perhaps they might even be
interested in salvaging what remains of a reputation.
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