Somehow, a 39-game winning streak that ended in a blowout was not the strangest thing that happened during an atypically determined college football game on Saturday. Instead, the crown for the bizarre game belongs to a game between East Washington and Idaho.
Early in the fourth quarter, East Washington kicker Seth Harrison missed an attempt to miss the goal, to keep the score tied, at 21-21. At least, that’s how the game went down on the official score.
Unofficially, and more accurately, Harrison made the slide that should have put his team ahead, but there was one small problem: the officer under the goalposts did not look.
From a further review, it appears that the official was adjusting his mask while the play was taking place, and it appeared that he was not looking up when the kick sailed through the stands. To an officer who does not look up, the kick will look like a miss, as it bounces as if it hits the right goal post. In fact, the football jumped from the bottom of the Kibbie Dome’s big scoreboard that was placed just above the goal posts.
Even after an investigation, officials ruled that the kick was not good.
You can see how the surrealistic events unfold here:
Turns out an FG in the Eastern Washington game is not ruling anything well, although it has clearly gone through the stands.
The ref did not look at it, thought it was going upright, but he bounced off another object pic.twitter.com/12GdDBxWNT
– Unnecessary Roughness (@UnnecRoughness) 28 February 2021
Hosting a football game is harder than it seems, but most fans can probably agree that the easiest part is to look up and decide if a ball is going left or right of a big yellow pole. Apparently this crew was not up to the task.
The ‘missed’ field goal was eventually followed by an attack in Idaho, with the Vandals winning 28-21 to open their season. Who knows how the game would have played out if East Washington had taken the lead early in the fourth quarter.
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