There is a saying “Don’t count your chickens before they’re
hatched,” but somehow I don’t think it applies to the sequence of events that
allowed the Arizona State Sun-Devils to escape with an inexplicable 32-30
victory over 20th-ranked Wisconsin on Saturday. Maybe “Everything you know is wrong,” or
better yet, “Stupid is as stupid does.” It was a malformed crossbreeding of umpire Jim Joyce’s “safe” call blowing Armando
Galarraga’s perfect game just because he was offended that Galarrago celebrated
too soon, and officials mistaking Vinny Testarverde’s head for a football for
the benefit of the home team crowd.
What initially spurred the strange sequence of events in
Tempe, Arizona last night occurred in a matter of seconds and interpreting it is
clearly in the eye of the beholder. Wisconsin, trailing by two points, was
driving down the field in the final minute, hoping to get into position for a
game-winning field goal. Arriving at the Arizona 13-yard line, this plan was
all but assured. The Badgers had no time outs left, so it might have been
presumed that a spiked ball was in order. But with 18 seconds remaining in the
game, quarterback Joel Stave took the snap, rolled to his left, and then, well,
he goes down and comes back up in practically one motion; if you blinked, you
never saw it. There was the ball, lying on the ground. As if it was supposed to
be there.
Now, when a quarterback takes a “knee,” he usually takes the
snap, steps back and insures that one of his knees touches the ground, at which
point the play is blown dead at the spot of “knee.” The clock will keep
running, but that is usually the point—to run out the clock by running a
non-play to avoid a turnover. The play that Stave was running was technically
legal; in an effort to spot the ball in a more favorable position, he took a
few more steps than usual, but in so doing accidentally bumped into a teammate—which
apparently caused him to truncate was he was originally intending to do when
and where.
But because this version of the “knee” was an unusual
occurrence, there was clearly confusion on the part of at least the defensive
players, and likely spectators and commentators. It wasn’t entirely certain
what Stave was up to, almost like calling a timeout when you don’t have one,
and hoping no one was keeping track. It was also not certain that Stave’s knee
had touched the ground at all, but the relevant camera shots did eventually reveal
that his knee in fact did touch the ground. In any case, the intent was to
center the ball in the middle of field, and line-up quickly and spike the ball.
And that’s where the “fun” really began. There was obvious
confusion on the field about what had just transpired. The officials had blown
the play dead with about 14 seconds remaining on the clock, at which point the
ball should have been spotted within the next few seconds, and Badgers would presumably
line-up and spike the ball with just enough time to attempt a field goal. The
problem was that the perhaps deliberate “confusion” on the part of the ASU
players made at least one of them decide that maybe he should cover the ball
until the “confusion” was resolved. Apparently the Pac-12 officials—a group
that has a reputation for making the mundane controversial—seemed to be “unsure”
of what to do themselves. Was the ball actually still “live”? The umpire
claimed he was waiting for a “decision” despite the fact that the whistle had
been blown, which should have ended the discussion right there. By the time the
officials decided the ball was “dead” after all and forced the ASU player to
remove himself from the ball, there were only three seconds remaining, and only
one second left when the Badgers were allowed to line-up, obviously failing to
snap the ball in time.
ASU coaches and players, of course, claim in the aftermath
that they didn’t cheat, and that the play should have been a turnover anyways,
since it wasn’t clear to them that Stave’s knee touched the ground. Stave might
have avoided all of this “confusion” had he simply handed the ball to an
official, but apparently his “run-in” with one of his lineman misaligned the
part of his brain that counseled common sense. But the greater part of the
blame lies elsewhere. Stave made the mistake of assuming that the officials
knew what he was up to, and at least one official seemed to have an idea of it
when he blew the whistle. Unfortunately, the rest of the officiating crew
allowed themselves to be “led” by the actions of the ASU players, and permitted
the precious seconds to slip away as Wisconsin players and coaches were wondering
what was going on. By the time one of the officials decided he ought to do something and take possession of the
ball, it was already too late.
Perhaps that was the plan. The officials were not “positive”
about how to judge the play, so in lieu of making a definitive decision, they
allowed enough time to run off the clock so they would not have to. When the
clock struck double zeros, they immediately ran off the field without a word of
explanation. ASU thus won the game by default, 32-30. Perhaps in recognition of
the questionable result, Wisconsin only dropped as many places in the AP poll as
Michigan did after its embarrassing “win” over Akron.
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