I had a dog in the fight for the Clemson game last night because my in-laws are hard-core Clemson fans (for reasons that escape me).
They love to tease me about Clemson’s superiority in all categories, while completely ignoring any redeeming qualities of Utah’s…
Having said that, I just couldn’t route for Ohio State either.
At any rate, did anyone think the refs were kind of slanted towards Clemson a bit? I’m not necessarily complaining about the targeting call, but it did seem the Tigers were getting a little bit of a nudge. I thought the fumble callback was pretty egregious. But maybe I’m not being fair.
The point being; it seems that our game with the longhorns is Texas’s game to lose. Does anyone else share that vibe?
Personally I hope we kick the living s*** out of them, because I view the beatdown of Oklahoma as most satisfying for the same reasons. I know it’s not cool to engage in schadenfreude, but, it just seems that some teams will always have the perennial winner tag and a decisive win could really help us in the realm of general consensus vs these “storied” institutions.
Go UTES!
I agree, I think that the view is TU “should” beat our Utes. Like you I hope that we kick the snot out of them. I have other reasons than they’re just our opponent. I have a hard time deciding who I dislike more, TU or BYU. Both for the same reasons, their insufferable fans.
As for OU, I don’t think they deserved to be there, and the score showed it. Now if our Utes had played well and be Oregon, we would have been at the Peach Bowl. I do believe that our Utes would have shown better than OU. Given time to prep, Whit (usually) has the team ready for an opponent.
I went to bed and did not see the second half of the tODU vs Clemson game. I thought the targeting call was legit. Ironically, it was the same call that we did not get in the PAC 12 Championship Game vs Oregon.
I saw the replay of the Catch/Fumble/Scoop and Score and was in shock over the reversal. Receiver clearly had control of the ball and was bringing it down into a running position when it got punched out. I thought the evidence had to be overwhelming to reverse a call? Apparently, subsequent reviews by leading officials agree with this assessment:
I agree on the fumble. What a bad, game-determining call.
The targeting, in my opinion, was quite different than the no-call in our game against Oregon. The OSU defender launched himself and led with his helmet. In our game, the contact was incidental and not intentional.
I don’t remember the wording of the rule change this offseason, but in practice that’s what happened. They now look for intent. It was a great change as targeting calls on incidental contact were commonplace and awful.
In past years, the inconsistency was infuriating. With the add of intent this season, it was actually quite consistent across the many games I watched. There will always be borderline cases, but it was much better this year. One of the few examples of college football fixing something.
I’ve seen a handful of media folks advocate for two levels of targeting. I’m fine with this, I guess, even if I’m not sure why we want to do it. It would add another level of controversy and subjectivity. The important thing is that they don’t bring back punishments for incidental contact. Nothing worse than combing through all angles of a replay to see if two helmets touched during the previous play.
I do like the current rule. If you intentionally hit someone with your helmet, you’re out. I think it’s a fairly strong deterrent.