Big Ten Offers Explanation On Michigan-Western Michigan Ending & Absolutely No One Is Buying It

Quinn Eaton·
CULTURESPORTS
·
Michigan

The greatest college football upset that never was – Western Michigan over Michigan – is now having it’s very controversial ending explained by the Big Ten Conference and its referees.

If you are waking up this morning and seeing all of this outrage for the first time, let me paint the scene for you. The Western Michigan Broncos were giving the No. 16 ranked Michigan Wolverines all they could handle at The Big House. In fact, the Broncos had the Wolverines on the ropes, and even delivered a knockout blow.

Until the referees got involved.

The Broncos kicked their final field goal with just 1:15 left on the clock to make the score 12 to 7, meaning Michigan needed to drive down the field to score in just over a minute if they wanted to avoid what would have been considered one of the biggest upsets in the history of college football.

With no timeouts left and only 9 seconds on the clock, Michigan was forced to throw a hail mary, which star quarterback Bryce Underwood actually overthrew, and ball fell to the ground outside the back of the end zone as the clock hit triple zeros. That’s at least how us casual college football fans saw it play out.

Here’s how it looked in real time:

As Western Michigan began celebrating what would have been the MAC program’s signature upset for the ages (Michigan was predicted to be a Big Ten powerhouse this season) the refs suddenly announced that the previous play was under review. When the broadcast took another look at it, they confirmed that there shouldn’t be any time left on the clock, and that Western Michigan had won the game.

But the Big Ten referees evidently saw something else (more on that shortly), and said that they were putting one second back on the clock, which gave Underwood and Michigan one more shot at an unlikely hail mary. Sure enough, here’s what happened with the Wolverines and their second chance:

Admittedly, it was an impressive throw and catch… but Michigan shouldn’t have ever gotten that second chance.

College football fans were almost certain that what they saw play out on the field was rigged in favor of Michigan. And everyone was waiting for some sort of official review from the Big Ten and its referees. Late into the night, the conference did finally provide a statement and what they call “video evidence” of the one second being added back onto the clock:

“Following video review, it was determined Western Michigan’s #18 started his jump from an established out-of-bounds position (left foot) and made contact with the ball with one second remaining on the clock. As shown in the provided video of what was viewed during the replay process, a side-by-side view of the play and the game clock, using a direct shot of the game clock in the stadium, was used to determine the final ruling.

Eighty-five minutes prior to the game, all broadcast cameras used for the replay system, including the camera on the game clock, are synced using a strobe system to ensure all cameras are aligned.

Per NCAA Football rule 4-2-3-a, ‘A ball not in player control, other than a kick that scores a field goal, is out of bounds when it touches the ground, a player, a game official or anything else that is out-of-bound [sic], or that is on or outside a boundary line,’ and thus the clock is stopped.”

Yeah… no one is buying that.

If all the clocks are synced prior to the game, why was the official clock the broadcast was referencing different from the one Big Ten refs used? In the broadcast replay, the football is still in the air as the triple zeros appear.

Conveniently, the clock the Big Ten provided in that video above has “0:01” on the clock when a player touches the football.

College football fans still think it was fixed:

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