[NU Sports] Big Ten bowls ... 0-1

[SjT (Stephen J. Truog)]

> painful to see how the officiating specifically
> affected Michigan's comeback
> attempts.  They had a terrible no call on pass
> interference for the go-ahead
> touchdown, the loss of a play or two in the final
> drive because the
> officials didn't hustle to restart play, and a

Yup - I didn't see the middle of the game, so perhaps
there were bad calls to even it out -- but in the
final 5 minutes, the zebras definitely made a handful
of calls against Big Blue.

The restart for the punt was atrociously slow,
especially given how there was no pile-up or anything
and that the official had the ball within 5 seconds of
the play being over. The pass interference call also
was a big miss. And if Michigan had even one of those
two replay timeouts left, they would have had at least
a minute to drive. And that's before the final play.

> announcers, who normally are going to try to give
> the bowl game refs a
> break, were early on questioning whether these refs
> had the necessary
> experience to ref a game with these sorts of

Which brings up a good question -- anyone know what
conference crew is working the Sun Bowl? With the
offenses involved, you'd hope they assign a WAC
crew.:)

> re-inventing Nebraska football.  They are clearly
> back on the track to
> greatness and are just a recruiting class or two
> away from elite national

Still not sure I see them going there. They're back to
bowl status, but I don't see them getting the recruits
that the Florida schools, Texas, SC, etc. get and
getting into title contender status. Michigan is by
far their most impressive win under Callahan and as we
know at NU, the Wolverines can get sloppy in games --
especially ones against non top 10 teams.

I appreciate the rebuilding job he's undertaking - but
it's too early to say if it was a success or not. The
Big XII was pretty weak this year and UNL never had to
play Texas and still went 4-4 in league play. Their
defense has solid moments that harken back to the past
tradition, but I'm not sure they're heading back to
elite status. Though that Big XII north should be open
for a while.

And Joe wrote:

>but in large part I think it 
>was realizing that had Ecker cut back to the other
side of the >field and turned it on about 5-10 yards
before he was knocked out >of bounds, we probably
>would have witnessed one of the all-time greatest,
most >improbable plays in football history. 

Definitely! And all he really had to do was lateral it
back to Breaston and then block for him. Ugh! So close
to a miracle! I wonder what would have happened then
-- the refs were already running off the field to get
out of town. Would they have replayed to see if the
knee was down on the lateral/fumble. Ugh!

>but you hate to see the game decided by the refs like
>that...especially in favor of a Big Ten opponent, and
especially >Nebraska.

Exactly - maybe that's what left me a little sad as
well. Yeah, Michigan helped choke away the game, but
those were some rotten calls late and as that sea of
red was dancing and jumping for joy, I had flashes
back to five years ago and the halfback option throw
to rub some salt in our wounds.

Oh well - guess it's up to the Cats and the Gophers to
send the Big Ten into January with a winning mark.

GO CATS!!!
-SjT

* * * * * * * * *
STEPHEN J. TRUOG
sjtruog at yahoo.com
GO CATS!!!


	
		
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