Ohio State, down by 7 points, has fourth and three from Miami’s 5-yard line in the first OT of the National Championship. Needless to say, Ohio State needs at least a first down to keep this game going. Craig Krenzel, Ohio State’s QB, drops back with a five-step drop and throws a pass to a well-covered wide receiver. The ball actually hits his wide receiver in the hands before being dropped, again a well-covered play by the Miami secondary. That’s it, Miami wins, and they are National Champions!!
Keith Jackson has declared them champions. Players, students & alumni are rushing the field in celebration. Miami has repeated!!
But wait a minute . . .
A (hopefully) insignificant yellow marker was just thrown by one of the referees. Penalty? For what? Excessive celebration? Offensive holding?
NO!! IT CAN’T BE!!
** DEFENSIVE PASS INTERFERENCE!?!?! **
(You can actually hear the blood spatter against the walls of my family room as a major, life-sustaining artery carrying precious blood to my brain explodes violently from my head.)
The replay clearly shows good defense. Hell, one or two of the other referees were blowing the play dead & waving the arms to indicate an incomplete pass!! Dan Fouts, in watching the replay, called this “a BAD call”.
Yet this one person, this “qualified referee” just essentially decided the National Championship. Of course, as Miami’s hopes are deflated, Ohio St. wins in the second overtime, assuring that Miami back-to-back perfect seasons does not happen.
Thanks to one referee and his bad judgement. Thanks again for making such an abhorantly bad call.
Look ahead a few plays and the same call was made agianst Ohio State giving Miami a first and goal from the two. The key differnce was? Miami couldn’t do anyting with it. A game is a game and bad calls, good calls, any calls, someone is going to be pissed. Can’t you just see it for the great game it was? I am neither a fan of Miami nor Ohio State but I was on the edge of my seat the entire time, I feel honored for having watched the game. Plus, I think the call was good. Just my opinion
LiquidChaos, thank you for the reply. I equally am not a fan of either team (but of another Big East team), and I thought it was one of the best football games I’ve seen this year.
However . . .
I get really pissed when football is reduced to the subjectivity of the referee. In this case, Miami had won the National Championship if it wasn’t for the judgement of one official. I understand that Miami had pass interference on their posession (in which I felt was a LEGITIMATE call), but it should have never come to that. As an objective observer, I thought it was a horrible call, and it cost Miami the National Championship!!!
And of course Miami was so completely deflated after this call that their entire defense and offense, no doubt the subject of many bad calls in the past, were unable to muster the requisite effort to either A) keep OSU out of the end zone or B) score themselves…
For a specific example, a clip and a hold allowed them to return the final Ohio State punt 50 yards, which allowed them to tie the game in the first place. If the fucking officials hadn’t blow those, there would be no unfuckingbelievably bad call (which appeared to be not so unfuckingbelievably close to holding anyways).
Boo hoo. Pitt kicked them up and down the field anyways. Their days were numbered.
Seems to me that what we had was two evenly matched football teams going up against each other in a very close game. Both teams proved they belonged on the field, and the outcome was bound to be decided by chance or something like it. That doesn’t mean it wasn’t a great game.
** iampunha ** , apparently it was just a minor vein
Also, Mr. Cynical , I am equally concerned about McGahee. It looked like he blew out his knee, which could be career ending!! I was very suprised to hear Dan Fouts say that (and I’m paraphrasing) “several shoe companies were ready to pay him if he came out early & endorsed their products, but I guess that will have to be put on hold now”. Can’t Fouts even wait until he gets back into the locker room for an X-ray?
I only saw the game beginning in the 3rd quarter and I thought there were several bad calls against Miami, starting with the one where they ruled that OSU stripped the ball from a Miami player who had intercepted the ball in the OSU endzone and run out with it. From the replay, it sure didn’t look to me like OSU had possession of the ball before they landed on the ground.
The pass interference call actually looked legit after a second look.
And what was up with that Miami running back’s knee? At one angle it looked like his knee bent completely backwards. Career ender. But in another angle it didn’t look so bad.
Glad OSU won. We need somebody to root for here in Cincinnati. Go Bucks.
I agree, this was one of the worst looking knee injuries I have ever seen. I couldn’t watch the second replay, the first one of his knee going the wrong was is imbedded in my mind. I hope he can (somehow) recover from this, but it’s doubtful. This makes my bitching (in another post) insignificant and petty, for which I apologize to this board.
I was just hoping for a never ending procession of overtime periods, with both times slugging it out against each other for days, weeks, and years. That would be cool.
The guy’s knee didn’ bend backward, it bent SIDEWAYS! Ack! I hollered so loud Mrs C. came to see what was wrong. Poor guy’s going to be on crutches for a LONG time. Here’s to hoping he can come back by some miracle.
The second replay was from a different angle and looked pretty harmless. What surprised me is that they didn’t stabilize his leg in any way. From what I saw, bones and tendons should have snapped. But they just got him up and helped him off the field.
FTR, I think the call was bad, but even before the punt return, I kept seeing blatant holds by Miami’s offensive line which were right in front of the refs but which were never called. So all in all, I think things evened out.
Welcome to life outside the Big East.When you’re getting the snot knocked out of you on every play,it tends to throw off your game.No pitty pat tackles here.Dorsey had what-like 8 sacks the whole year before tonight?Experience is a good teacher,see if this lesson can carry to the pros.
The best and most deserving team won,and the toughest conference this year showed their stuff from top to bottom.
Tho,I * still * can’t believe Penn State lost.
