KALAMAZOO, Mich. — After review, the Mid-American Conference wants Western Michigan recognized as having defeated Michigan after all.
The MAC cited what it believes to be an "extraordinary" circumstance in appealing the outcome of the Michigan-Western Michigan game and asked NCAA and College Football Playoff administrators on Tuesday to recognize the Broncos as the winner instead of the Wolverines. The CFP's bracket selection choices in December carry significant financial benefits to teams that make the playoff.
The NCAA said the result will stand, noting its playing rules do not have a protocol for overturning the outcome of a game and the Division I Football Bowl Subdivision Oversight Committee does not have the authority to do so. According to the NCAA Football Rules Book, the team with the most points at the end of the game is the winner and the score is final when the referee declares the game has ended.
“No rule decision may be changed after the ball is next legally snapped, legally free-kicked or the second or fourth periods have ended,” the rule book says.
Michigan won 13-12 on a Hail Mary pass Saturday night after the replay official had put one second back on the clock when Bryce Underwood's first try was incomplete.
An NBC replay showed a clock expiring before the ball hit the ground or any player, and Terry McCaulay — the rules analyst on the broadcast — said that was a synced version of the stadium clock.
The Big Ten said later that the call was correct and published a recording of the replay as it was reviewed by officials. The conference said it too used a shot of the game clock in the stadium, which showed 1 second remaining when the ball was touched by WMU's Micah Davis. Since Davis had just been out of bounds, the clock would stop on such contact.
The Big Ten on Tuesday stood by its postgame statement and declined further comment. Michigan spokesman David Ablauf had no comment on the appeal other than, “The Big Ten handles all replay reviews and discussion. We don’t have any involvement in replay as an institution.”
The CFP did not respond to a request seeking comment.
The controversy was the talk of college football on the long holiday weekend with many questions surrounding how the officiating crew decided to put the second back on the clock and give Michigan one more try at the win. The MAC initially accepted the Big Ten explanation, but that had changed by Tuesday.
In a letter to the FBS Oversight Committee, MAC Commissioner Jon Steinbrecher said “established protocol” in this situation is that the television truck is contacted with a request to insert the in-stadium game clock onto “the program feed” — and that is supposed be the sole source of the replay decision.
“Had the prescribed protocol been followed and the program-feed clock been used, no additional time would have been restored, no additional play would have been awarded and Western Michigan would have won the game 12–7,” Steinbrecher wrote.
Game results are rarely, if ever, changed after the fact unless the NCAA throws out or vacates results because of rules infractions, though there are countless examples of decisions by officiating crews affecting the outcome (Colorado beating Missouri on a fifth down in 1990 is familiar to many).
Western Michigan was voted the preseason favorite in the MAC, and that would suggest that the possibility certainly exists for it to factor into the CFP rankings. The highest-ranked team from the Group of Six leagues gets an automatic bid to the playoff. Michigan was ranked No. 16 in the preseason AP Top 25 poll but dropped out of the rankings Tuesday.
“I recognize that the oversight committee does not ordinarily alter results recorded on the field,” Steinbrecher said. "Nevertheless, the circumstances of this game are extraordinary. ... Western Michigan should not be disadvantaged because the prescribed replay protocol was not followed and an unsynchronized clock was used to award a play that, under the applicable procedure, should not have occurred.”
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