BigAppleBadger
On Wisconsin
Look guys, here's the deal.
Wisconsin lost a chance to win the game because of an egregious error by the officials. That's not in dispute. The officials have been reprimanded and suspended by their own conference.
In retrospect, perhaps this would have been avoided if Stave had handed the ball to the ref, but every rules expert that's been interviewed about this says that he did nothing wrong by placing the ball on the ground. It was definitely not a fumble.
I won't accuse the ASU player that fell on the ball of trying to run out the clock intentionally, but this is in effect what happened. The clock should have been stopped when a defensive player grabbed a dead ball (referee fuck-up #2).
We don't know for sure that Wisconsin would have won the game on its FG try, but it's a pretty good bet that even Kyle French drills a 30-yarder from head on. At the very least, the errors by the officials prevent any of us from knowing who would have won the game if that play was properly officiated.
Wisconsin now has a loss on its record, and there's nothing that can be done about that. If they end up going 10-2 with our only other loss at Ohio State, then it could well be a loss that costs them a BCS at-large berth (much more likely that Wisconsin would get this than the CCG loser). It's dropped them in the polls, even though it shouldn't*. They can still win the Big Ten and hopefully bounce back to beat the ever-living shit out of Purdon't this weekend.
* Not even talking about the botched refereeing here. Logically, if you think ASU is one of the best 25 teams, and Wisconsin played them down to the final play on the road, then Wisconsin must be one of the best 25 teams as well. I think we can all agree that these were evenly matched teams.
Wisconsin lost a chance to win the game because of an egregious error by the officials. That's not in dispute. The officials have been reprimanded and suspended by their own conference.
In retrospect, perhaps this would have been avoided if Stave had handed the ball to the ref, but every rules expert that's been interviewed about this says that he did nothing wrong by placing the ball on the ground. It was definitely not a fumble.
I won't accuse the ASU player that fell on the ball of trying to run out the clock intentionally, but this is in effect what happened. The clock should have been stopped when a defensive player grabbed a dead ball (referee fuck-up #2).
We don't know for sure that Wisconsin would have won the game on its FG try, but it's a pretty good bet that even Kyle French drills a 30-yarder from head on. At the very least, the errors by the officials prevent any of us from knowing who would have won the game if that play was properly officiated.
Wisconsin now has a loss on its record, and there's nothing that can be done about that. If they end up going 10-2 with our only other loss at Ohio State, then it could well be a loss that costs them a BCS at-large berth (much more likely that Wisconsin would get this than the CCG loser). It's dropped them in the polls, even though it shouldn't*. They can still win the Big Ten and hopefully bounce back to beat the ever-living shit out of Purdon't this weekend.
* Not even talking about the botched refereeing here. Logically, if you think ASU is one of the best 25 teams, and Wisconsin played them down to the final play on the road, then Wisconsin must be one of the best 25 teams as well. I think we can all agree that these were evenly matched teams.