- 1 week ago
Kevin Sheehan analyzes the highly controversial finish between Michigan and Western Michigan, where a disputed extra second put back on the clock allowed Bryce Underwood to throw a game-winning Hail Mary to JJ Buchanan. He breaks down the Big Ten's explanation regarding synchronized replay cameras versus broadcast clocks, Western Michigan's response, and what this near-disaster means for Michigan heading into their matchup against Oklahoma.
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00:00Yes, it was under previous review.
00:04And then they put a second back on the clock.
00:07And then Bryce Underwood threw a Hail Mary.
00:10This time into the end zone where it could be caught.
00:13And J.J. Buchanan pulled it down for, I'm sure at this point,
00:17you guys know that Michigan is a four-touchdown favorite
00:21against Western Michigan.
00:23Ended up pulling off one of the more controversial finishes
00:26in recent sports history.
00:30With a 13-12 win over Western Michigan.
00:34Where did that second come from?
00:36That is the question.
00:38Because to anybody that was watching, and I was watching it live,
00:42as I was watching LSU Clemson, but also Western Michigan, Michigan live,
00:48that second did not appear as if it should be on the clock.
00:53There were three zeros.
00:54And the ball was touched by a player who was technically out of bounds.
01:00That ended the play after the clock went to all three zeros.
01:05But they put another second back on the clock, and Michigan won the football game.
01:10Week one, college football.
01:12Not the greatest of overall slates over the weekend,
01:16but there were certainly a couple of notable results.
01:20I think LSU's 51-10 win over Clemson was a notable result for sure.
01:27That was an ass-kicking of the highest order.
01:29One that Dabo Sweeney has not felt ever.
01:33And I would have to think that even though it's just one week,
01:37his days are numbered at Clemson.
01:40Lane Kiffin's team looked great.
01:42Sam Levitt looked great.
01:43The defense was awesome.
01:44They ran the football, which they couldn't do last year.
01:47Certainly a very impressive win by LSU.
01:50Setting the stage for the first massive game of the year,
01:54two weeks from this past Saturday,
01:56when Lane Kiffin returns to Oxford, Mississippi,
02:01to face his old team, Ole Miss, in week three of the season.
02:05The Terps won impressively, 62-0.
02:08Virginia Tech and James Franklin's first game beat VMI 73-3.
02:13Virginia was off this past weekend.
02:16James Madison, you Dukes fans, they won.
02:18They held on for a win over Liberty, a tight win.
02:22Maryland gets another, should be a fairly easy game.
02:25They're two-touchdown favorite over UConn.
02:27And then week three,
02:29they play James Franklin's Virginia Tech squad in College Park
02:33in what will be a huge game for both, not on a national scale,
02:36but in terms of the ability to go have a season, a winning season,
02:41that game will be crucial for both teams.
02:44Now let's get back to Western Michigan, Michigan.
02:47A couple of things leading up to the final play of the game.
02:52First of all, what was really alarming for Michigan,
02:56if you're a Michigan fan, is you got worked in this game.
03:00You were so lucky to only be down 12-7.
03:04They held their end up, you know, in the red zone and outside of it
03:09in scoring territory by forcing four field goals.
03:12But the time of possession was 40-20.
03:16They gave up, you know, too many yards on the ground,
03:19and they got worn down.
03:20And the play that preceded the field goal that made it 12-7
03:26was a real unfortunate play for Western Michigan.
03:29There were basically about 40 seconds left in the game.
03:34It was a third and two at the Michigan 12-yard line.
03:39They were up 9-7.
03:41And they had run it down their throat in the fourth quarter.
03:45Third, they had a 20-play drive in this game that ended in a field goal.
03:49A first down ends the game.
03:51And this play is so open and so easy,
03:56but the snap was botched really by the center.
04:00It came back rolling, and they had to recover it for a loss.
04:03Michigan called their last time out with 38 seconds to go,
04:07forcing Western Michigan to kick a field goal.
04:09But if you watch that play, if it's a good snap, it's game over.
04:13It's probably a touchdown run.
04:15It's certainly a first down run, which would have ended the game.
04:19That was unfortunate for Western Michigan.
04:22The other thing, by the way, leading to the final moments of the game,
04:25Bryce Underwood, for those of you who don't know,
04:28last year, going into last year, was the most heralded quarterback recruit in the country.
04:33He had committed to LSU initially,
04:35and then the stories are guys like Dave Portnoy, et cetera,
04:39got involved as Michigan guys,
04:40and he got an absolute obscene number to renege on LSU's commitment and go to Michigan.
04:51And he was not very good last year at all.
04:54I mean, this was a guy that literally had, you know, a 54% completion percentage.
05:01And I'm sorry, it was not 54%.
05:05It was under 60% completion percentage, 11 touchdowns to nine picks.
05:10He just wasn't very good in what turned out to be a tough season for Michigan last year.
05:16And the thought was this 6'4", 235-pound dude would come back
05:20and would be good under Kyle Whittingham.
05:24He was awful in this game after a solid start.
05:27He does not look to have it.
05:30Man, recruiting is not easy.
05:33You know, this guy was the number one, number one overall,
05:36and it doesn't look like he can play.
05:39Now, he's still young.
05:40He could develop, but he doesn't see it.
05:43He throws it to where his guys aren't.
05:45He doesn't, you can see there's no anticipation throwing at all.
05:50His first attempt, as you just heard when we came back, wasn't even close.
05:55You know, on a Hail Mary, there's only one thing the quarterback has to do,
06:00and that is get it to the end zone and make sure the ball stays somewhere in the end zone.
06:05It can't be thrown out of the back of the end zone because you can't win that way.
06:12Anyway, what happened between the time that Western Michigan partied as if the game was over,
06:20and then all of a sudden they put a second back on the clock.
06:24I read this story, I think it was last night, on CBSSports.com.
06:30It was an interesting story written by Brandon Marcello, taking us behind the scenes from a Western Michigan standpoint.
06:38The coach, Lance Taylor, I mean, he was totally calm throughout the game,
06:42and then, look, he didn't know.
06:45He's not looking at the replays on the field, but there wasn't a lot of pushback from him.
06:51And then the Mid-American Conference essentially accepted the Big Ten's explanation as to why there was a second left.
06:59The president of Western Michigan University is Russ Cavalhuna.
07:05Russ Cavalhuna said that he used to be a federal prosecutor,
07:11and they've looked into this, and they don't discern anything unfair or untoward in the process.
07:21He said, can the process be improved by having what the viewing public sees
07:25as the same as what the review or replay officials see?
07:29Maybe.
07:30Frankly, that's not for me to decide, he said.
07:33But the Big Ten provided them with a video, and it's out there if you haven't seen it,
07:39two hours after the game ended, of the replay booth going through what they were looking at,
07:48which was not the same thing that viewers were looking at.
07:53So, the burning question, why did the game clock on the NBC broadcast clearly show that no one touched the
08:04ball
08:04until after the clock went to zeros, indicating that the game was over?
08:11Well, the NBC cameras, this is according to NBC, and by the way, Cavalhuna, the Western Michigan president,
08:23agreed with this statement.
08:24The NBC cameras are not the official arbiter of timekeeping within the game.
08:30Big Ten and Big Ten game officials are responsible for keeping the actual timekeeping of the game.
08:39The Big Ten said that a direct shot of the stadium clock synchronized with all of the broadcast cameras
08:48in the replay system via a strobe system 85 minutes before the game was used in the ruling.
08:58The game clock visible on NBC's national telecast had already hit zero when the defender touched the ball,
09:06but it was explained that what was seen at that point in the broadcast was not on the same Big
09:13Ten replay official
09:15synchronized clock.
09:17Why not?
09:18Nobody has an explanation for that.
09:21Something changed between the time they synced it up via strobe 85 minutes before the game began
09:29and the actual replay when the clock hit zeroes.
09:33You can watch the video of the replay officials, and from that replay official vantage point,
09:39it does look like there's a second on the clock when the defender reaches up from an out-of-bounds
09:45position
09:45and touches the ball.
09:47But is there reason for skepticism?
09:51Sure.
09:53Did they make it up?
09:55Maybe.
09:56You know, I'm not a big conspiracy theorist, as most of you know.
10:02It's not the world in which I live.
10:05I know people that do that, and I find them to be very entertaining sometimes.
10:10Mike Pereira, basically the longtime Fox, you know, head of officials
10:16and the Fox rules analyst on NFL and college games, did say that the unwritten rule is that
10:28when in doubt, you go to the actual game coverage replay video, meaning the NBC video.
10:40That's what he said.
10:42But there's been no corroboration that that's some sort of unwritten rule.
10:46But there is a response that it's not a written rule, that when there's confusion,
10:52you go to the coverage, the broadcast coverage's clock.
10:58I don't know what to think on this.
11:01I can tell you this.
11:02Watching it live, I felt like it was one of the all-time, all-time hose jobs in the history
11:09of college football.
11:11You know, equivalent to Missouri's fifth down many years ago in the Missouri-Colorado game.
11:18That just doesn't make sense that one would be different from the other.
11:24But did they make up the video two hours of the replay officials
11:29and mess with the clock to show that the clock had a second left?
11:34I don't know.
11:35That would be an all-time thing.
11:38But Western Michigan has chosen to accept the Big Ten's explanation,
11:43not be outraged by it, and move on.
11:47You know, in a world in which, let's face it, there'd be lawsuits,
11:51people wanting everybody to get sued, wanting the game result to be overturned,
11:57wanting, you know, the game to have been essentially played under the flag of, you know, forfeit or protest.
12:06No, it's not the way Western Michigan approached it.
12:10I think it's a wild, wild situation in which I don't know what the right answer is.
12:16I mean, I'm skeptical of the Big Ten's replay process.
12:21But at the same time, do I really think they made that video up two hours after the game
12:28to show this was our process and this is why we saw something different than what everybody else saw?
12:34That's a big reach.
12:39Michigan this week plays Oklahoma.
12:41Now let me get to the payoff for Saturday night.
12:45The payoff is just know on Friday I'm going to give out Michigan plus the points against Oklahoma in the
12:51Big House
12:52because nobody that watched that game thinks Michigan's any good.
12:56Nobody thinks Michigan will have a chance against that Brett Venables defense of Oklahoma
13:02and Oklahoma's laying five to five and a half.
13:06So there is that opportunity that came out of Saturday night.
13:10Bryce Underwood's, God, he stinks.
13:12He's just not very good.
13:15The rest of the college football weekend, again, not a great week one for the most part.
13:22Week two, a bit different.
13:24Ohio State and Texas, Saturday night in Austin.
13:29Julian Sayan at Ohio State against Arch Manning.
13:32Both of those teams opening up with convincing wins.
13:36Texas favored at home Saturday night against the number one team in the land by a point and a half.
13:45All right.
13:47I'm going to give you, when we come back, the team that I – do you think we –
13:53I was thinking about this, and I didn't mention this to you, Max, before the show or during the break.
13:58Do you think we should take calls on Western Michigan, Michigan, or not?
14:03I mean, part of me, as I was going through it, I'm like – say again?
14:07Let's put it out there.
14:07If you want to talk Western Michigan, Michigan, we can have a conversation.
14:10What do you think happened at the end of that Michigan game, 301-230-0980?
14:16What do you think happened?
14:17Are you going to jump to the conclusion that the Big Ten literally created, after the fact, a video fake
14:27to prove that there was a second left on the clock the way they saw it from their replay booth?
14:33Because you have to get to that spot if you believe there shouldn't have been – or there wasn't a
14:39reason for the second to be on the clock.
14:41Here's what I would say overall.
14:43You better make sure these clocks are synced in the future because it just creates this opportunity where there is
14:49great skepticism about what happened and about how the game was fixed at the end.
14:55Can't have that in sports.
14:57I think across the board, we've got to start doing what the ACC has been doing the past couple years
15:01and giving everybody an inside look at the situation room.
15:04Live.
15:05Yes, live.
15:06Live.
15:07We got that two hours after.
15:09We did.
15:10Now it was troubling.
15:12301-230-0980.
15:15What do you think happened with the game's over, wait a minute, it's not, we're going to put a second
15:21back on the clock?
15:22Remember this, too, about a conspiracy theory on that.
15:26Like, the conspiracy theory to put another second on the clock so they can throw another, you know, one out
15:32of, you know, hundred Hail Mary shot.
15:35Like, it's not like, hey, we're going to put another second back on the clock so Michigan can win the
15:40game.
15:41Because they will win the game.
15:42It was still a long shot that they would win the game.
15:48Um, in the moment, you're not thinking, oh, they put another second back on the clock.
15:52Well, Michigan's going to win the game now.
15:54I mean, I remember thinking, can you imagine if they actually completed this and they won the game?
15:59Not expecting it to happen.
16:01You know, this wasn't like, did he catch it or didn't he?
16:06You know, clearly one, we had a different view in our replay booth.
16:12We saw the foot get down, touchdown, Michigan wins the game.
16:16And everybody's wondering, I didn't see that on my replay.
16:20Looked like the ball was still moving as the foot came down.
16:24And then he went out of bounds.
16:25This was to add another second to provide another hundred to one, five hundred to one shot, whatever it is,
16:36Hail Mary.
16:37What do you think happened?
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