One Second That Should Not Have Existed: Michigan Escapes Western Michigan 13-12

Nobody disputes what happened on the last play. Bryce Underwood dropped back, heaved it toward the end zone, and JJ Buchanan came down with it. Michigan 13, Western Michigan 12. What people dispute is why that play was allowed to happen at all.

On the previous snap, Underwood's pass fell incomplete as the game clock hit zero. On NBC's broadcast the ball was clearly still in flight, nowhere near a receiver, when the clock expired. Then, after review, one second was put back on the clock. Rules analyst Terry McAulay said on air that he could not explain it: the ball was not close to touching a player when the clock hit zero, and the Big Ten was going to have to tell a lot of people how they got to one second.

That second was enough. Buchanan, who accounted for all 75 yards on the final drive including a 28-yard third-down catch that kept it alive, made the play of the young season. Kyle Whittingham, in his first game as Michigan's head coach after two decades at Utah, got a win he will not want to watch again.

The poll voters treated it as a loss. Michigan entered the week ranked No. 16 and fell out of the AP Top 25 entirely, which almost never happens to a team that won. Western Michigan, meanwhile, goes home with a 12-point performance against a Big Ten program and a grievance that will not be resolved by any statement the conference eventually releases.

Two things can be true. Michigan's offense looked broken for 59 minutes and 59 seconds, and that problem is Whittingham's to fix regardless of how the game ended. And the officiating and replay process produced a result the broadcast's own rules expert could not justify in real time. Of the two, the second one is the one the sport should be more worried about.