UGGHHHHH!!!!

OK I think we can all agree the officiating was (to put it nicely) not up to par. That argument definitely goes both ways because UM got some questionable calls to help them move the chains so I hope I don’t sound too much like a UM homer with this post.

JOE mentioned in a separate post that the bad officiating wasn’t the reason UM lost game and for the most part I agree but I’d like to touch on this a little more and while I don’t want this to sound like a should-have/would-have/could-have type of rant, it at least begs another look.

The 50 yard pass to Roundtree was a blown call. If there was conclusive evidence to rule that wasn’t a catch then we at home certainly weren’t privy to that video. It was ruled a catch, we weren’t shown anything to turn it over therefore I feel UM was robbed of great field position. We scratched our way to a 53 yard FG attempt that we missed. It probably was a 30 something yard attempt had the catch stood. UM was robbed of 3 points. The score should have been 3-0

The Vincent Smith fumble was outrageous. How in the world a player can dive for a ball, cradle it between his forearms and chest, hit the ground, have the ball pop up into the air and into the hands of a defender and be ruled an INT is beyond me. To me there are two outcomes to that play A) incomplete pass B)Caught pass, down at the spot the player touched the ground.

That call defied the logic of a downed player which is “Any part of the runner other than his hands or feet touches the ground. Ankles and wrists count as downed.” I’m still not sure why there wasn’t a review of the play.

The O was forced to hobble over to the sidelines and rely on the D to bail them out again (which they did) and sit and wonder if they were ever going to be able to move the ball. In my opinion that was a momentum shifter. That was UM’s chance to come out in the second half and get things going or at the very least answer the FG that Nebraska just scored.

That INT was on the NU 43. That would have been a first down. UM would have had nice shot to get back into FG range and make the score 12-7 (counting the missed FG opportunity from Roundtree catch)

Then UM and NU traded FGs in the 3rd. It could have easily been 15-10 going into the 4th. So that would seemingly make my point moot given that NU scored a TD in the 4th but don’t forget, Bellomy threw a pass behind Funchess in the end zone that I think Funchess should have caught and on the very next play threw an INT in the end zone.

UM was in that game more than the final score would have you believe and we were in it with our inexperienced backup QB for ¾ of the game. That’s what makes the loss so hard to swallow.

Bottom line, UM blew the game but they had a lot of help doing so with the horrible calls by the refs.

Reading your post reminds me of why the game is actually played on the field. There are so many things that can go wrong or not go right. We blew it, oh well. As much as it pains me to say it I think that sparty beats Nebraska so basically that may mean that the ohio game will in fact be for the Leaders division championship. I'm hoping that this will be a wake-up call (hopefully) for our guys. They have had multiple opportunities previously that if Denard goes down we're in trouble, who knows if they will actually listen this time.

What happened to Bellomy? We all knew that the kid wasn't going to be a star but reports out of Spring camp were that he was doing well. Apparently that was misleading.