The NCAA is already changing how college football handles replay reviews involving the game clock after the bizarre ending to Michigan’s 13-12 win over Western Michigan.
The new guidance is meant to establish one standard procedure for every game when replay officials need to determine whether time should be restored or adjusted. Going forward, the official in-stadium game clock is the controlling clock, and replay officials are supposed to use the game clock embedded within the television program feed when reviewing timing situations. If that embedded clock is unavailable, they can use the broadcast’s on-screen clock graphic instead.
That may sound like dry officiating language, but anyone who watched Michigan’s opener knows exactly why the NCAA moved quickly.
Michigan appeared to lose to Western Michigan when quarterback Bryce Underwood’s Hail Mary fell incomplete with the NBC broadcast clock showing 0:00. Western Michigan players began celebrating what looked like a massive road upset. Instead, replay officials restored one second to the clock after determining the ball had been touched before the official stadium clock expired. Michigan then got another play, and Underwood connected with JJ Buchanan on a 47-yard touchdown to give the Wolverines a 13-12 win.
And that is where the mess started.
The Big Ten defended the ruling afterward, saying replay officials used a direct view of the stadium clock and determined Western Michigan defensive back Micah Davis touched the ball with one second remaining. The problem was that viewers, players, and coaches were seeing a different clock on the television broadcast, creating a situation where the public essentially had no way to follow the same timing source the replay booth was using.
The NCAA’s response is basically an attempt to make sure that does not happen again.
The new protocol creates a defined hierarchy for replay timing reviews and is intended to make the process consistent from stadium to stadium. In other words, no more confusion over which clock counts, which video feed replay officials should be watching, or whether some separate timing source can suddenly decide the outcome of a game.
That clarification came as the controversy continued to grow.
The Mid-American Conference formally challenged the outcome and asked the NCAA and College Football Playoff selection committee to recognize Western Michigan as the rightful winner. MAC commissioner Jon Steinbrecher argued that Big Ten replay officials failed to follow the proper timing procedure and that the error directly changed the result of the game.
The NCAA and FBS oversight officials reportedly do not have a mechanism to simply reverse the official result of a completed game, so Michigan’s victory remains on the books. But the MAC’s complaint made the larger issue impossible to ignore: if the process was clear and consistent, there should not have been this much confusion over what clock actually governed the final play.
There is an important distinction here too. The debate is not necessarily about whether there mathematically could have been one second left. Some analysis of the play suggested the Hail Mary lasted less than the full nine seconds that were on the stadium clock before the snap. The bigger problem was procedural transparency. Players and coaches have to know what clock they are playing against, and fans watching the game should not discover afterward that the visible clock was apparently not the decisive one.
Michigan certainly benefited from the confusion. The Wolverines were given one more chance and converted it into a win. Western Michigan was left believing it had already completed one of the biggest victories in program history before being called back onto the field for one final play.
Now the NCAA is trying to make sure the next team does not end up in the same situation.
The irony is pretty simple: it took one of the strangest finishes of Week 1 for college football to decide everyone should probably be using the same clock.
Better late than never.