Michigan 13, Western Michigan 12

The clock we saw on the screen is a camera shot of the actual stadium clock (same with the 40 second play clock). If, as the B1G says, the stadium clock and the replay clocks were synced, then in no world should anyone in the replay booth have concluded that the ball touched a WMU player at any point before all zeros showed on the clock.

There are no fractions of a second on the clock, nor is there any ability to determine fractions of a second, short of pulling out a stopwatch and doing the timing manually. That is, of course, never done throughout a game. It’s why the ref said to put nine seconds on the clock as opposed to 8 and 6/10ths of a second.

It’s sad that the B1G has to cheat to benefit their darling Wolverines. ScUM must have something on the leaders of the conference.

ChiefGritty said:

The Big Ten's statement said:

That system failed, plainly. And the idea that "oh, the error is on NBC's end this is just broadcast stuff that went out to the dum dums in front of their TV's" totally misunderstands the way this works. The various NBC camera angles, including the clock *are* what the replay officials use. It's only because TV broadcasters are there that you can have replay in the first place.

The truth is? Football is a game of inches, it is not a game of milliseconds, never has been, and micro-timing against the clock is not a part of the game in any other context, thus why there aren't tenths of a second on the clock, this just isn't a thing.

They operated with an illusion of precision and made an "indisputable" call that very much wasn't.

The sport of football does not want this or need this.

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You seem to be very confident on stuff that nobody is sure of. That’s great to see.

Since that’s the case, do tell What exactly failed?


Or are you saying we shouldn’t care what exactly failed? It’s not a game of milliseconds so we shouldn’t care. If that’s the case, nothing wrong here and let’s move on? I’m still not sure what your assertion is.

sbillini said:

Since that’s the case, do tell What exactly failed?

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Well it's plain to see the feed the replay officials used as released by the Big Ten was not precisely synced to what was broadcast.

As evidence that the broadcast camera was "right", see the video of Western Michigan's final field goal, in which the scoreboard itself becomes visible. The NBC scorebug is exactly synced down to the frame, as you would expect.


The live play with the scorebug and the NBC replay with the direct shot of the stadium clock also show no evidence of any discrepancy.

All evidence is that somehow what the replay officials used was slightly off, something the Big Ten statement conspicuously does not deny.

sbillini said:

Or are you saying we shouldn’t care what exactly failed? It’s not a game of milliseconds so we shouldn’t care. If that’s the case, nothing wrong here and let’s move on? I’m still not sure what your assertion is.

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I do think that's not the only failure though. I don't think the replay booth should have intervened in the first place, having intervened I don't think the angle they were working with provided conclusive proof even with the mis-synced clock, and this is not the fault of any of the officials involved but I don't think the rule is well constructed to avoid this kind of problem.

Am I daft? It seems I recall many times a pass was deflected and then caught. Am I loco? How does the clock stop when the ball is touched on a pass? The NCAA said the man who tipped it was out of bounds. Big deal! If the defender goes up from out of bounds and touches the ball, the receiver who stayed in bounds is still allowed to catch it. This is Michigan.

This has been Michigan for at least 47 years. In 1979, Michigan was favored by a lot against IU. IU got a touchdown late to pull within one point. Coach Corso kicked to tie the game. On third and one, from near midfield, with very little time on the clock, IU was sacking the Michigan quarterback in the middle of the field and he threw the ball to Lee Corso out of bounds as he was going down. Coach Corso told the refs it was intentional grounding with a big loss on the play. The refs said it was an incomplete pass. Instead of fourth and a whole lot, it was fourth and one with the clock stopped. They ran for the first down (because it as fourth and one) and scored on the next play. The clock went to 0 while the ball was in the air.

After the game, the press kept asking Corso why he didn't go for two. They refused to discuss the intentional grounding. Nothing has changed.

I was born an Oklahoma fan. When Oklahoma went to the SEC I said I would never cheer for them against a non SEC opponent again. I was wrong. Oklahoma plays Michigan next week. Boomer!

I posted that before I read this board. I read on the IU board that the NCAA said Michigan should have had another attempt because a Western Michigan player who had been out of bounds touched the ball and at that point, the clock should have stopped instantly. I didn't see that on this board. The clock stops when the ball hits the ground, not when it is touched in the air. I didn't bother to watch any replay. I got a full replay of the end of the 1979 game in my head as soon as I read about this.

ChiefGritty said:

I don't think the rule is well constructed to avoid this kind of problem.

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Wow, here is something I didn't know

From Rule 15, Article 9(b) of the official 2026 NFL rulebook: “An on-field ruling that time expired during or after the last play of any half, or of an overtime period in the regular season, or of an overtime half in the postseason, is reviewable by the Replay Official only when the visual evidence demonstrates that the clock should have stopped with two or more seconds remaining.” (Emphasis added.)

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Is that a bit ham-handed? Sure. Does it prevent last night from happening while stopping every game ending from becoming an endless review nightmare? Sure does!

This is what I mean by a "purpose" @TheChief4Life

We don't want football to be a game of milliseconds, we don't need football to be a game of milliseconds, and we can prevent football from being a game of milliseconds.

In J Leman's parlance "here's the thing:"

1. The game clock was set per the officials to 9 seconds. 9 seconds is 9 seconds. It Doesn't matter which clock you are using.

2. The replay officials could've simply used a stop watch and determined more than 8 seconds went by from the whistle to the ball being touched. Even If it's 8 whatever the game is over since there are NO half seconds or whatever in CFB

3. Bottom line: with all the crap surrounding Michigan Football it has put "the football brand" in a bad spot. BT was in brand protection mode and found a way out to protect their cash cow in what should've been an embarrassing loss. Period. The MAC went on long with this because they get paid to play Big Ten Teams. Period.

Go Illini!

Route47 said:

2. The replay officials could've simply used a stop watch and determined more than 8 seconds went by from the whistle to the ball being touched. Even If it's 8 whatever the game is over since there are NO half seconds or whatever in CFB

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That’s not right though. If the clock is set to 9 seconds, it should display 0:09 for one full second after it is started before dropping to 0:08.

Clock set at 0:09
Ball snapped, clock starts
0.00 to 0.09 seconds elapsed —> clock displays “0:09”
1.00 to 1.09 seconds elapsed —> clock displays “0:08”
2.00 to 2.09 —> “0.07”
3.00 to 3.09 —> “0.06”
4.00 to 4.09 —> “0:05”
5.00 to 5.09 —> “0:04”
6.00 to 6.09 —> “0:03”
7.00 to 7.09 —> “0:02”
8.00 to 8.09 —> “0:01”
9:00—————> “0:00”

The play lasted 8.5 seconds from snap to WMU player touching the ball. By that math, at exactly 8.5 seconds elapsed, the clock should have still been displaying “0:01”. Which would mean one second remaining

This was my argument from before that the “evidence” suggests that a tech in the NBC control booth took one feed of a camera pointed at the scoreboard and split screened that with the main feed but for whatever technical reason the main feed was going to screen about a half or three quarters of a second behind the clock feed. The math would support that conclusion.

Alright, I'm about wrapped on this. It wasn't a rob by the clock. The clocks in the stadium ticked to 0:00 an eighth of a second (3-4 frames) after the ball was touched.

The first movement of the snapped ball is a clean reference. Calling that frame 1, every camera I've checked agrees that the ball is touched by WMU at frame 253-254. There's no smoking gun among broadcast footage, but the "far cart" (camera 7) has solid ticks - it can be seen hitting 0:02 at frame 197 and would have hit 0:00 at frame 257.

I probably won't check for rule interpretations. Refer to what I said earlier about the clock being wrong and ticking immediately. While the clock at 0:09 only gave Michigan 0:08 to play (0:08.5 with normal human error), the officials judged that there should by 0:09 seconds going by the same clock. They don't say that there should be "nine seconds left to play". They say that there should be "nine seconds on the clock". Even if they make an inappropriate end-of-game adjustment for each quarter accidentally only being 14:59 long, adding that second back only gives Michigan more time.

The broadcast is still a mess. The graphic broadcast clock is synced at 0:08, but ticks to 0:07 three frames early and is within a frame after that. It's not reliable. It displays 0:06 and 0:00, one frame earlier yet... for a conspicuous total of four frames early.

The inset replay is also funky. Forget my earlier excuse when counting frames - it's just OFF. The best smoking gun I have that things are out of sync again comes from camera 7 - when the stadium clock ticks to 0:04, the WMU DB around the 37-yd line (#2 Scoop Gardner) is outside of the hashes facing the end zone (screenshot). When the broadcast inset clock hits 0:04, he's standing on the hashes facing Underwood (screenshot). For clarity, I've shown one clip before the tick and the other after. There's no way they can both be accurate and one shows a real clock. The inset is about 8 frames ahead of reality, which sucks for people at home... and anyone using it for replay.

...

With all of that said, should we talk about the B1G release? Neither that 10-ft camera behind the endzone nor the camera on the clock appear among the broadcast views. Are they real? Are they synced? I suspect that the B1G has no smoking gun and may have only gotten lucky that two wrongs made a right.

Jive Turkey said:

WMU plays again at Michigan in 2029. The least that should be done is make that a home game for the Broncos.

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No way that'll happen. WMU need the money they get from playing that game at the Big House.

sbillini said:

Interesting. If this is all true then wmu should’ve won the game and there’s two deeper issues. Why are the game clocks ticking faster on the first second? And two, why did the replay clock not sync to the game clock? I guess it’s a question of who do you want to be correct. If the scoreboard clock is technically wrong all the time, maybe the replay clock is actually correct. So technically the correct call was made at the end. But I lean more towards if there’s a structural issue with the scoreboard clock, you just have to let it stand as it happened and fix the scoreboard clock going forward.

I’d still want to see the replay with the scoreboard clock and the snap in the same frame to get fully convinced. But holy moly what a wacky scenario

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I agree on the deeper issues and I hope that our Gies guys are nerding out to check that our clocks don't have the same vulnerability.

I'm not sure that clocks that are kept accurately but only give 14:59 per quarter would count as a clock error in the rule book. And like you imply, do two wrongs make a right? It's crazy.


We can't see a clock and the snap in official hi-def footage that I've seen, but I've been off and on and haven't hunted since this morning. At the link above, Cam shows the clock ticking to 0:07 way before you'd expect and it's easy to sync to other footage. FYI, the first three "segments" (PGM, A, B) are one continuous clip of the broadcast replay.

ChiefGritty said:

Wow, here is something I didn't know

Under NFL rules, Michigan wouldn't have gotten a final play

Current college rules set the stage for a controversial one-second hair-splitting.

www.nbcsports.com

Is that a bit ham-handed? Sure. Does it prevent last night from happening while stopping every game ending from becoming an endless review nightmare? Sure does!

This is what I mean by a "purpose" @TheChief4Life

We don't want football to be a game of milliseconds, we don't need football to be a game of milliseconds, and we can prevent football from being a game of milliseconds.

Click to expand...

I want a game that’s fair. If zero on the clock is the rule…not 1 or 2…but zero, and we have the ability to measure close enough, Then we should strive to be as accurate as possible. If the stadium clock showed zero; that’s what should’ve been used, full stop. If it didn’t; it shouldn’t. I’m guessing that’s why the ncaa rules don’t talk about tenths of the second and just round up all the time. I think that’s a perfectly reasonable way to approach if. But in that case the stadium clock is the source of truth.

All of the above still doesn’t explain why the clock seems to tick the first second too fast. If that happens regularly then there’s an issue there.

Nonetheles, if the rule is 1 or 0, then it should be looked at as 1 or 0. And the stadium clock needs to be the source of truth. Still haven’t seen that play with the stadium clock shown. If that is indeed what the stadium clock showed then the direct question to the big ten would be why wasn’t the replay booths clock synced properly? Or, even more directly, why do they even need to use a different clock than the stadium clock at all?

AutoPoster 3000 said:

That’s not right though. If the clock is set to 9 seconds, it should display 0:09 for one full second after it is started before dropping to 0:08.

Clock set at 0:09
Ball snapped, clock starts
0.00 to 0.09 seconds elapsed —> clock displays “0:09”
1.00 to 1.09 seconds elapsed —> clock displays “0:08”
2.00 to 2.09 —> “0.07”
3.00 to 3.09 —> “0.06”
4.00 to 4.09 —> “0:05”
5.00 to 5.09 —> “0:04”
6.00 to 6.09 —> “0:03”
7.00 to 7.09 —> “0:02”
8.00 to 8.09 —> “0:01”
9:00—————> “0:00”

The play lasted 8.5 seconds from snap to WMU player touching the ball. By that math, at exactly 8.5 seconds elapsed, the clock should have still been displaying “0:01”. Which would mean one second remaining

This was my argument from before that the “evidence” suggests that a tech in the NBC control booth took one feed of a camera pointed at the scoreboard and split screened that with the main feed but for whatever technical reason the main feed was going to screen about a half or three quarters of a second behind the clock feed. The math would support that conclusion.

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Correct. If the clock operator at the game sets the clock to 9 seconds, the game clock will not show “0.00” until a full 9 seconds has elapsed.

My take is that if the play in question had taken more than 9 seconds, then it’d be shown everywhere that WMU got screwed that way. But the play didn’t. It took less than 9, and even if it was fractionally less than 9 the clock would still be showing .01 and there’d be time for one more play.

Just stopwatching the play itself shows it’s less than 9. But I can also see the argument from WMU side that if the timekeeper screws up, that’s just the breaks of the game. And we are talking tenths of a second.

Fly Illini Fly! said:

https://twitter.com/x/status/2096626422966022565

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Two absolutely blown calls by Bill Lemonnier, which led to video review in college football.

ChiefGritty said:

Wow, here is something I didn't know

Under NFL rules, Michigan wouldn't have gotten a final play

Current college rules set the stage for a controversial one-second hair-splitting.

www.nbcsports.com

Is that a bit ham-handed? Sure. Does it prevent last night from happening while stopping every game ending from becoming an endless review nightmare? Sure does!

This is what I mean by a "purpose" @TheChief4Life

We don't want football to be a game of milliseconds, we don't need football to be a game of milliseconds, and we can prevent football from being a game of milliseconds.

Click to expand...

The good news, this will likely be adopted in the NCAA. The bad news, it will happen after, and as a result of, us getting screwed.

sbillini said:

I want a game that’s fair.

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It would not have been unfair to end the game after the first hail mary, knowing everything we know and having seen everything the relevant decision makers could see at the time. Do you honestly in your heart of hearts disagree with that?

I note also that unavoidably, at base this is a question of values. Fairness. We agree on that fully.

sbillini said:

If zero on the clock is the rule…not 1 or 2…but zero, and we have the ability to measure close enough, Then we should strive to be as accurate as possible.

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Do we have the theoretical ability to measure to that exactitude? Absolutely. But at what degree of reliability and what cost to the game?

The NFL rule says it's more important for games to have endings that are conclusive to the human beings involved in real time than to pause to make exacting measurements of the precise camera frame in which the ball touched out of bounds. But they do this in a way that still allows their eye in the sky to correct egregious error.

I think that strikes a wise balance.

sbillini said:

All of the above still doesn’t explain why the clock seems to tick the first second too fast. If that happens regularly then there’s an issue there.

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You may note on Twitter or elsewhere people are driving themselves crazy pointing out various other plays in which the clock runoff was very obviously imprecise.

To-the-decimal-point precision in clock runoff is simply not a part of football and never has been. And we don't want or need it to be.

sbillini said:

the stadium clock needs to be the source of truth

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I'm glad we agree on this.

But the rules are also very clear that there must be "indisputable video evidence" to overturn a call on the field.

In addition to very visible problems (the angle the Big Ten has shown us is totally insufficient to establish exactly when the defender touched the ball, it's suggestive, but no more than that, and other angles show the contact point as ever so slightly later than it initially appears), those replay officials were, it is obvious in retrospect, operating with too strong of an assumption of the precision of their clock syncing.

I wonder if it were reversed and WMU threw the hail mary..... would they receive another play? I didn't have to wonder long....

I had a rough day yesterday with health issues......I just saw this thread about an hour ago....didn't know anything about this game until then ....................my only response will be scUM is evil and wmu got robbed ....period......

scUM is run by evil demons of the underworld and should be hated by everyone even remotely acquainted with college FB .......



scUM Foosball is the debil .......it really really is .................



this is embarrassing.....I want to bit*hslap sumbody.......I really really do.......