MAC Statement Regrading End Of NIU vs. Coastal Carolina Bowl Game


The following is a statement from Mid-American Conference Commissioner Jon Steinbrecher

At the end of last night’s NIU vs. Coastal Carolina football game in Orlando, a series of errors by the on-field officials and the replay official denied NIU the opportunity to run one more play. Following the reception along the sideline, the play should have been stopped for a review. Also, the clock was not managed appropriately on what should have been the final play as the center judge should have been allowed to clear the center before the referee wound the clock. This should not have occurred and the egregious errors around a potential game-changing situation is both unfortunate and unacceptable.

Congratulations to the student-athletes and coaches at NIU and Coastal Carolina for tremendous seasons and a hard-fought bowl game.

Spoiler Alert - no one really cares if there was (or wasn't) a referee mistake (that did not directly take points of the board) in the something bowl played on some day a week or something before Christmas.

Although the faux safety call had zero impact on the outcome. We lost by 3 touchdowns (maybe more).

If some of you only care about things based on how many other people care about things then try working on your own disorder and not spending time on a message board telling the participants how unimportant their favorite team or conference or bowl game is. Go be buckeyes if you just want to fit in with the crowd.

Just a warning that being a total dick won't help you stand out there.

Actually, I think most people took you post to that point.

My memory could be off, but we weren’t losing by 3 touchdowns when f’Ing McCabe hosed us with that call. Not unreasonable at all for the fight to go completely out of a team when the official is just going to start blatantly awarding points to one team, when it looks like the fix is in, etc. i was at that game, and i remember shouting quite loudly* that if that was how the refs were going to call the game, we should have stopped play right then and walked out.

(*To be clear, i was sitting in the last row of the top deck, no one of any consequence could hear me, and they wouldn’t have had any reason to listen to a random guy in any case)

If it had been during the regular season or a championship game, the officiating crew would've been reprimanded and maybe docked some pay or told to stay home for a week or two. But a CUSA crew officiating a game between a MAC team and a Sun Belt team? They'll get their bonus check and go about their business.

Had this happened to a top tier SEC school, Greg Sankey would have made sure the officiaiting crew would have spent next year doing high school JV games deep in the Louisiana Bayou. As it stands now, no one seems to care; a sad metaphor for where the MAC stands in the eyes of the college football powers that be.

With or without an impact on the game, it was a uniquely bad, and outrageously obvious error. As such, the play stands on its own merit, over and above any effect it had on the specific game. For example, you'll find it at 4:06 of this video, "The Worst Calls in College Football History"

https://youtu.be/O-T1a34vatc?t=247


Perhaps BTC can answer this question. This play could not be corrected at the time, even though it was clearly wrong, because where the ball was to be spotted was not reviewable. Have any changes been made to the rules to allow a way to prevent something like this from happening again?

As I recall the fumble TD might have been more insane because they could have reviewed it and somehow missed multiple issues. I am sure my memory is bad bit if I recall our reciever caught it as he was sliding to the ground and it was called a catch and a fumble somehow, Then their player scooped it with his knee down and then stepped out on his first or second step of a fumble return. I'm sure that isn't exactly right as it was 8 or 9 years ago but...

But that wasn't all. Before any of that happened my brother had called me from Louisiana in the first quarter complaining about how many bad calls there had already been. They were just not historically bad calls that end up on lists of the worst officiating calls of all time. I remember him saying there had been numerous bad calls and more of them had been in our favor to which I agreed. Then while we were on the phone Ohio went on a drive that was kept alive by 3 or 4 bad calls against Buffalo before we turned it over. I remember a phamtom PI and Tettleton scrambling and jogging toward the sideline like don't him me because I'm going out of bounds in 4 or 5 yards and then getting hit to save those 4 or 5 yards and the defense getting flagged. I wish a video full video of this game exsited because it had to have been one of the absolute worst called games that there ever was in 1A/FBS. An insane number of bad calls along with two that I think were historically bad calls. Didn't the MAC suspend that whole crew for the rest of the season or something like that?

It seemed to let the air out of our guys. The game went from 7-3 to 23-3 in about ten minutes.

I personally would agree with incomplete pass, either way though in college the game would be over. Terry is thinking NFL timing rules, which would stop the clock. NCAA rules, a forward fumble gets the clock moving on the ready. But I fully agree with his 2nd statement, that pass was incomplete and game over and the MAC commissioner is being a Homer for his league. Now, how, why replay did not review the catch is a question I have.