A Loss Would Have Been Less Embarrassing Than Michigan’s Win Over Western Michigan

David Roth, writing for Defector, succinctly explains what the hell happened at the end of the Michigan versus Western Michigan game.

What happened between that first scoring drive and the last two plays of the game was, basically, Michigan getting pushed around and making weird mistakes. They committed nine penalties, and Western Michigan dominated the line of scrimmage on both sides of the ball; Western Michigan possessed the ball for 40:08 of game time. Again, it was a very specific type of ass-kicking, and not at all the way a new coaching administration—that coach is Kyle Whittingham, who brought Buchanan with him from Utah—would want to get started. Michigan was able to get the ball to midfield with nine seconds left, down 12-7, but when Underwood’s pass sailed out the back of the end zone as time expired, the game seemed to click finally into place as what it had been becoming all along—an impressive win for Western Michigan and an undeniably transcendent moment for placekicking Dieters, but mostly One Of Those Types Of Losses. This, finally, is where things got interesting.

A seemingly perfunctory Hawk-Eye video review of that last play from the Big Ten’s central replay center held that a second should be put back onto the clock, and so it was. It is worth noting that the video review team that made this determination were and to all appearances remain the only people that could see this. Those watching at home could clearly see the clock turn over to zeroes with the ball still untouched in the air.

NBC rules analyst Terry McAulay was blunt in his assessment of the decision to overturn the call. “The ball isn’t even close to touching the player when it goes to zero,” he said. “Now their system, their Hawk-Eye system, apparently either had a different sync or whatever and they came up with one second when it touched the player. I don’t see how that happened, assuming our clock is correct. It is clearly not touching the player; the ball is clearly still in the air when the clock goes to zero on our screen.”

With one second left on the clock, Underwood got another shot at a Hail Mary, and his second prayer was answered. Michigan’s receivers sealed WMU’s secondary deeper in the end zone and Buchanan came down with the pass at the goal line for a game-winning score. Where there had been audible “Fire Kyle” chants, there was now only a kind of embarrassing sort of jubilation. Members of the Tarps Off Community streamed out of the stands and onto the field, as they might have in a dramatic victory over a traditional rival, and not after their team belatedly cashed in a video mulligan against a MAC team after 60 minutes spent seemingly playing through extremely bad allergies.-

I watched it live and thought Western Michigan was basically getting screwed. Thinking about it a little longer, if things were reversed and Western Michigan was looking for the Hail Mary to beat Michigan, and the first play attempt didn’t result in a touchdown, there’s no way in a million years they’d put a second back on the clock for a second try.

The other big takeaway is that Michigan is not very good.