Saturday night’s clash between the Big Ten’s Michigan State Spartans and Pac-12’s Arizona State Sun Devils in East Lansing ended in some controversy. Michigan State had a made field goal waved off due to a flag for having too many players on the field.
In their do-over, the Spartans missed the potential game-winning field goal and the Sun Devils got the win.
However, following the game, the Pac-12 has admitted that there was an error on the missed field foal. As it turns out, an Arizona State player jumped over the line of scrimmage during the Spartans’ kick which means a flag should have been thrown. The penalty would have been 15-yards for leaping and would have given Michigan State yet another opportunity to boot the game-winner.
Leaping is not a reviewable penalty, but Dean Blandino, former NFL vice president of officiating and current Fox Sports rules analyst, also pointed out the glaring mistake by the officiating staff.
“Watch No. 15 on Arizona State,” Blandino said. “He’s moving toward the line of scrimmage. He runs, he jumps over the line. That’s a foul for leaping. You have to be stationary on the line to jump over that plane over your opponent. That’s a 15-yard penalty and they get another shot if that flag is thrown. It’s not a reviewable play. That’s one they just missed on the field.”
College football insider Brett McMurphy passed along a statement from the conference.
“There should’ve been a foul called for leaping,” the Pac-12 stated. “An ASU defensive player took running start & leapt over kicking team’s line in an attempt to block the kick.”
With the 10-7 win, Arizona State remained undefeated at 3-0 on the regular season while the Spartans dropped to 2-1 on the year.
As you might expect, Michigan State head coach Mark Dantonio was not happy with the officials after the game.
“We line up, try to kick a field goal, they try and hurdle us, that should be a penalty,” Dantonio said, via the Detroit Free Press. “They don’t call that a penalty, it’s not reviewable … I think they need to take a good hard look at the officiating, that’s all I’ll say, because it was some disputes out there.”
Michigan State looks to bounce back next week on Saturday, September 21 against Northwestern.