Wyoming-UNLV was totally bananas, went to 3OT, and nearly broke the all-time scoring record

Saturday’s most absurd college football game was not the referee-aided muck between Pitt and Clemson or the Michigan-Iowa game that Iowa somehow won.

It was a 135-point bonanza in Las Vegas between UNLV and Wyoming, which came one point shy of tying the all-time FBS record for points in a game held by Boise State’s 2007 win over Nevada and Navy’s 2007 win over North Texas.

(The Division I record: Weber State 73, Portland State 68, for 141 points in 2007. That season was wild in every way. And the NCAA record: 161, from Division II Abilene Christian 93, West Texas A&M 68 in 2008.)

The Mountain West is often good for underrated, thrilling football games. This one was the best microcosm of that. It took three overtimes to decide and involved six lead changes and a bunch of ties even before those.

Here’s UNLV’s 41-yard winning field goal in the third OT. Watch it, and it’s like seeing a hockey team win a playoff game in a third OT. Everyone’s just exhausted, and that exhaustion competes with euphoria.

UNLV forced a second overtime with a third-down touchdown pass that involved the receiver sliding into the uprights’ base. It looked kind of painful.

I’m burying the lede, though. The game got to overtime in the first place because Wyoming pulled off an outrageous last-second TD pass to tie the game in regulation.

Quarterback Josh Allen got flushed from his pocket, and he found a somewhat open Tanner Gentry in the end zone, who caught a 19-yard scoring strike that sounds not nearly as hard as it looks.

The point? Defense pretty much didn’t exist. UNLV’s offense was on the field a lot more than Wyoming’s, and the game wasn’t exactly even. It swung back and forth a good bit, but the one constant was that nobody really stopped anybody, with the exception of the two picks and two fumbles Wyoming coughed up.

The game included 13 punts on 42 drives. Thirteen! On 42!

Defense is overrated, but the Mountain West isn’t. I’ll take another few of these before 2016 is over, please.

Boise State and Wyoming are now tied for the lead in the MWC’s Mountain Division. The Cowboys hold the head-to-head edge, but if they lose again (they have tough games against New Mexico and San Diego State remaining), BSU could win the division and thus have a shot to win the conference and make a New Year’s Six bowl game.

Without just a few of these 135 points, the Cowboys would be in much better shape for their first-ever MWC division title.