Western Michigan led Michigan 12-7 with one second left, except there wasn't one second left. The stadium clock said zero. The clock on the broadcast said zero.
Big Ten replay put a second back on. Bryce Underwood threw a 47-yard touchdown. Michigan won 13-12.
On Tuesday the MAC filed a formal appeal with the NCAA and the College Football Playoff asking that Western Michigan be recognized as the winner.
Commissioner Jon Steinbrecher's statement is more specific than most people realize.
He isn't arguing the officials misjudged the time. He's arguing they used the wrong clock entirely.
"The established replay protocol requires that the game clock displayed on the program feed be used in determining whether time remained. Instead, the Big Ten Conference replay crew relied upon the clock feed embedded within its replay system."
"Had the protocol been properly followed and the program-feed clock been used, no additional play would have been awarded, and Western Michigan would have won the game, 12-7."
The MAC initially accepted the Big Ten's explanation on Saturday night. By Tuesday it didn't anymore.
Here's what history says about how this ends.
On November 16, 1940, Cornell went to Dartmouth on an 18-game winning streak, ranked second in the country. Trailing 3-0 with under a minute left, Cornell got the ball at the six yard line and scored to win 7-3.
Except the officials had lost count. Cornell scored on a fifth down.
The head of the conference said flatly that no film would change anything and that he had no power to alter a score.
Then Cornell watched the film, agreed it was true, and gave the game back. They wired Dartmouth and conceded, 3-0. It cost them an undefeated season.
The referee who blew it, Red Friesell, was known as Fifth Down Red for the rest of his life. His obituary said so in 1974.
Fifty years later it happened again, and it went the other way.
October 6, 1990. Colorado at Missouri. Colorado got a fifth down and scored on it with two seconds left to win 33-31. The film was unambiguous.
The NCAA said it had no authority to reverse the outcome. Colorado's coach Bill McCartney was asked about forfeiting and started talking about the condition of the field.
The result stood. Colorado won the national championship that season.
So the entire record is this. One reversal in the history of the sport, and it only happened because the team that won decided on its own to hand it over.
Nobody has ever had a win taken from them by a governing body.
The MAC is asking two of them to do it.
Michigan was ranked 16th in the preseason poll and dropped out of the Top 25 on Tuesday.
www.espn.com
