Somehow, a 39-game winning streak ending in disruption was not the strangest thing that happened during an atypical college football Saturday. Instead, the crown for the most bizarre moves belonged to a game between Eastern Washington and Idaho.
Early in the fourth period, Eastern Washington kicker Seth Harrison missed a field goal attempt to keep the score tied at 21-21. At least, that’s how the play fell on the box’s official scoreboard.
Unofficially, and more accurately, Harrison took the kick that should have given his team the lead, but there was a small problem: the officer under the goal posts was not looking.
Further analysis seemed to show that the official was adjusting his mask while the play was going on, and he did not even appear to look up when the kick went through the columns. For a referee who did not look up, the kick would look wrong because it bounced as if he had hit the right post. In reality, the soccer ball bounced off the bottom of Kibbie Dome’s big scoreboard, placed just above the goal posts.
Even after a review, the officials considered that the kick was not a good one.
You can see the surreal sequence of events happening here:
It appears that an FG in Eastern Washington was not considered a good one, although it clearly went through the columns.
The referee didn’t look, thought he left the vertical, but bounced off another object pic.twitter.com/12GdDBxWNT
– Unnecessary roughness (@UnnecRoughness) February 28, 2021
Refereeing a football game is more difficult than it looks, but most fans probably agree that the easiest part is looking up and deciding whether the ball went to the left or right of a large yellow post. Apparently, this team was not prepared for this task.
The “failed” field goal ended up being followed by a touchdown in Idaho, with the Vandals winning 28-21 at the opening of their season. Who knows how the game would have played out if Eastern Washington took the lead early in the fourth period.
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