West Virginia won at Texas on Saturday, 24-20. The game ended when the Longhorns didn’t convert on a 27-yard heave into the WVU end zone at the last second, but the Longhorns didn’t go quietly into the night after that.
FS1’s Brady Quinn broke 100,000 Texas hearts with this telestrator accident
The broadcast made it look as though West Virginia had too many players on the field. It was a counting error.
With the clock reading 0:00, officials went to review the play, and it wasn’t immediately clear why. But Fox Sports 1, which was broadcasting the game, had an idea. Color commentator and former Notre Dame quarterback Brady Quinn tried to count WVU’s defenders, and he figured out 12 were on the field.
The problem? Quinn miscounted. He appears to have pressed the numbers button only 11 times, but he skipped the number five, making it appear as though the Mountaineers had too many players defending the Longhorns’ last shot at the end zone. In reality, they did not.
Texans fans on social media confirmed the Darrell K. Royal Stadium video board was playing FS1’s feed, which likely explains the cheer in the middle of Quinn’s analysis.
After a short review, the game’s referee announced that the Mountaineers did not, in fact, have too many men on the field. A brief glimmer of Texan hope was extinguished, and the Mountaineers were officially, finally, 8-1 on the year, and the Big 12’s College Football Playoff hopes remained slim but not zero. That was a hell of a time.
It’s not clear what spurred officials’ uncertainty, but they were well within their rights to check WVU’s player count. The NCAA’s football rule book is explicit that the replay official at a given game can review the number of players on the field for either team.
If the Mountaineers had been guilty, it would’ve been a problem. Good for them that they weren’t.
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