STATE COLLEGE
James Franklin appeared to be something he never appears to be.
Speechless.
He may have been fighting back tears. The game proved that emotional for Penn State’s first-year coach, after all.
On Saturday night, his Nittany Lions — limping and short-handed and facing a streaking No. 12 Ohio State — found themselves in overtime. They didn’t win.
The Buckeyes made one too many plays and the offensive line whiffed on defensive end Joey Bosa one too many times for that to happen. But this had the feel of one of those watershed moments for a program in transition.
In the White Out at Beaver Stadium, on national television, the heavy underdogs did all they could. It felt, to a certain degree, like the team that lost had actually won. Not the game. But something.
Once Franklin gained enough composure though, it was clear this wasn’t all about sadness or overwhelming pride or whatever individual emotion causes that kind of feeling after that kind of night.
There was some anger, too.
Tangible anger.
“I’d love to come in here and tell you what I really think,” he said. “But that would not be appropriate.”
What Franklin would like to say is that he has already learned what Penn State coaches have had to come to grips with since 1993.
Big Ten officials stink. Even whipping boy official David Witvoet never had a night like this one officiating a Penn State game.
Example number 15,435 this season came early enough to get Penn State’s ire up long before the game ultimately was decided. With Ohio State defensive end Joey Bosa charging hard into his grill, Lions quarterback Christian Hackenberg attempted the old Bernie Kosar throw — flat-footed and sidearmed — toward receiver Matt Zanellato. As those passes often do, it sunk desperately short, and Ohio State safety Vonn Bell made a leaping attempt to grab it. For a moment, it looked like he made the highlight reel, with an official on the field ruling it a catch.
It quickly went to the booth, and while replay official Tom Fiedler looked at it, replays from several different angles were shown on Beaver Stadium’s expansive, high definition video boards high above both end zones. Those replays consistently, and unequivocally, showed the same thing: the ball rotating through Bell’s hands and hitting the lush green turf nose first.
The crowd was buzzing. Ohio State’s defense was huddling on the sideline, perhaps accepting what seemed inevitable. All the while, Fiedler was looking at, evidently, nothing.
Referee John O’Neill stood in the center of the field and announced the ruling on the field stood. It actually stood. Bell was getting an itnerception. Ohio State was getting the ball. Seven plays later, the Buckeyes had a 7-0 lead.
“The play technically was not thoroughly reviewed due to some technical difficulties with the equipment,” O’Neill told a pool reporter after the game.
Uhm ... what?
The story from Fiedler, who incidentlly was one of the replay officials when tight end Matt Lehman’s apparent touchdown was ruled a game-changing fumble at Nebraska in 2012 despite video evidence to the contrary — “We’re not going to get that call here. We’re not going to get that call anywhere, actually, against any team,” our old friend and Lions quarterback Matt McGloin seethed after that one — was curious: There was some kind of problem with the feed from the TV broadcast, which is what they use to judge the calls. Since Fiedler couldn’t see those replays, he couldn’t make a judgment. So, the ruling on the field had to stand.
“The feeds that the replay team looks at are the feeds you get at home (on TV),” O’Neill said. “We can’t create our own rules. The replay rules are clear that we have to use the equipment provided. So, Tom and the team reviewed what they had.”
And there was John O’Neill, standing in the middle of Beaver Stadium, where they just showed a dozen replays that were pretty clear the call on the field was wrong, telling the fans that they were living with their mistake.
Look, your only job as an official is to avoid a pool reporter knocking on your door five minutes after the game, asking you about a mistake.
O’Neill and Fiedler practically needed a press conference by the time this was over.
Ohio State took a 10-0 lead on a 49-yard field goal by Sean Nuernberger in the second quarter, and that kick shouldn’t have counted. The play clock expired, and had been at zero for about three full seconds. O’Neill said that one wasn’t reviewed, and Fiedler said nothing Penn State could do would get it reviewed. Not a reviewable play, he said. It will go down in history as flat-out missed. Ohio State should have had to either let Nuernberger try a 54-yarder, or punt.
“All of that equals 10 points?” Franklin rhetorically asked, a not-so-veiled reference that the calls not made resulted in that many Buckeyes points. “I would love to come in here on a weekly basis and tell you exactly what I think. It goes against everything I am (not to). I tell people the truth, but I’m not able to do that now.”
Truth is, this has been a problem for a long time. The attitude of Penn State fans, fair or not, is that most of the calls missed in this conference benefit a team like Ohio State. Most of them did Saturday.
That said, the botched replay doesn’t mean Penn State would have scored, any more than it means Ohio State wouldn’t have on its first drive had it started the way it should have. And Nuernberger is a strong-legged kicker. He’s plenty capable of giving a 54-yarder a fair shot. Maybe he even hits it.
Calls like this can’t happen again, though. They sullied a really wonderful game, gave Penn State plenty of ammunition against the conference and really should be seen as a source of national embarrassment. The Big Ten has let mediocre officials wreak this kind of havoc far too long, and at some point, they’re going to alter a game that really matters in the grand scheme. It’s a controversy a conference that doesn’t exactly need more national ridicule shouldn’t want to bear.
Contact the writer:
dcollins@timesshamrock.com
@psubst on Twitter
