The Pulse Newsletter 📣 | This is The Athletic’s daily sports newsletter. Sign up here to receive The Pulse directly in your inbox.Good morning! Don’t bother trying to look tougher than this today. Inside:
〽️ Safe harbor in Ann Arbor
College Football: An averted upset that shocks the conscienceLast night, No. 16 Michigan appeared to suffer a Week 1 home loss that was far worse than the program’s infamous 2007 defeat to three-peating Division 1-AA champion Appalachian State. The game had ended, as far as almost everyone thought. But the people responsible for video review decided Michigan had not lost to Western Michigan. That miracle preceded a second, when QB Bryce Underwood threw a heave into the end zone that receiver JJ Buchanan caught. The final score goes down as Wolverines 13, Broncos 12.What happened? You’re going to need to stay with me for a minute, and then I’ll let you make your own judgment. Here’s what we all saw on NBC’s broadcast:It’s a little blurry, yes, but what you see here is the game clock at 0:00 as a falling Hail Mary hangs in the air. Officials on the field ruled that the game had ended before the Big Ten’s video replay officials decided the real clock time remaining was 0:01.That’s one camera-clock alignment. Here’s another: the one the Big Ten’s video replay officials were looking at, from a video feed (via Dropbox) of their review center:OK, it’s a weird screenshot, but the linked video is clear: WMU’s No. 18, safety Micah Davis, catches the ball at 0:01. He jumped from out of bounds, meaning the ball is dead when it touches him. So the ball is dead, and on the replay crew’s clock, we see 0:01. I have no doubt that this is the footage and clock the Big Ten’s reviewers were seeing.Someone’s clock is wrong. Is it NBC’s, showing game over, or is it the Big Ten’s, showing one second left? The Big Ten does not explicitly blame NBC, which pays it hundreds of millions of dollars to air football games, but the conference does say this: “Eighty-five minutes prior to the game, all broadcast cameras used for the replay system, including the camera on the game clock, are synced using a strobe system to ensure all cameras are aligned.” Hmm. I don’t blame you if you have no trust in the Big Ten on this one, or if you think WMU would not have gotten the same consideration. This is going to be a mess, and I’ll let you blame the league or its broadcast partner, not me.This episode capped a Week 1 Saturday full of (less shocking) escapes, including:
