"Getting It Right"

The end of the Miami-Duke game will be talked about for years if not for the rest of my lifetime. Duke had scored with just a few seconds left to take a 27-24 lead. Duked squibbed kicked the ball to Miami on the ensuing kickoff and what happened next would have made backyard football proud. Miami used an eight lateral sequence to finally get the ball to the end zone and give them a 30-27 almost impossible victory. Every scoring play is reviewed and there was a flag down. The flag was for an illegal block in the back (which it appeared there may have been several) and would have given Miami one untimed down. After a nine minute review, the flag was picked up because the official determined that the "block was from the side" and all of the laterals were deemed legal, the touchdown stood, and Miami got a 30-27 win.

My initial reaction was that I did not know a block in the back was reviewable especially since they were reviewing the play to see if one of the runner's knees were down. One of them did appear to be but the ruling on the field was that his knee was not down and there had to be enough clear evidence that his knee did touch the ground.

The ACC suspended the on field officiating crew and the replay officials missing multiple violations during the play but the ACC would not overturn the outcome of the game and give the win to Duke. I heard Kenny Mayne on a segment on ESPN called "1 Big Thing" rant on about the ACC wanting to "get it right" and his opinion was that in order to get it right, Duke should have been given the win.

There were multiple violations during the play. In my opinion, even if the flag would have stood, Miami still would have been granted an untimed down and that is why the ACC cannot just hand the win to Duke. It did take several minutes to carefully watch the replay. There was at least three potential blocks in the back, a runner's knee may or may not have been down, and at the very end of the play a Miami player leaves the bench area without his helmet on and runs onto the field to celebrate before the play is over. The ACC is never going to get this one right no matter how hard they try.