Michigan escaped with the win Saturday night. But by the time the next AP Top 25 arrived, Kyle Whittingham’s debut had cost the Wolverines their ranking, and the fallout from that disputed final second was only beginning.
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Three days after Michigan’s 13-12 escape over Western Michigan, the Mid-American Conference reversed its initial acceptance of the ending and asked the NCAA and College Football Playoff to recognize the Broncos, not the Wolverines, as the winner for rankings, evaluations, and selection deliberations.
Michigan opened the season ranked No. 16. After needing a second-chance Hail Mary from Bryce Underwood to beat a MAC opponent by one point, voters didn’t just drop the Wolverines a few spots, they removed them from the poll entirely. Michigan still pulled 69 votes in the “others receiving” tally, but that wasn’t close to enough to stay ranked.
The Associated Press noted it was the largest fall to unranked by a winning team since at least 2008.
The offensive performance behind the vote didn’t help the case. Michigan scored on its opening drive and didn’t find the end zone again for the rest of regulation, needing the final second just to escape a matchup where the Wolverines had opened as 27.5-point favorites.
Western Michigan did more than hang around late. The Broncos took their first lead early in the fourth quarter when Dieter Kelly made a 39-yard field goal to finish a 20-play, 71-yard possession that consumed 13:40 of game clock and put them ahead 9-7.
Kelly added his fourth field goal of the night, a 33-yarder with 35 seconds remaining, to extend the lead to 12-7 and leave Michigan needing a touchdown. Western Michigan’s defense had also forced three turnovers, putting the Broncos in position to complete the upset before Michigan received another play after the disputed clock review.
The late deficit came after another damaging error from Underwood. With 1:50 remaining, he lost a fumble at Michigan’s 31-yard line, handing Western Michigan the ball in scoring range. Underwood had also thrown an interception in the first half and narrowly avoided two more, part of a three-turnover night for the Wolverines.
The consequences are already showing up on the board for Week 2. Michigan was originally a 2.5-point favorite over Oklahoma in the lookahead line, and by Monday that number had flipped to Oklahoma by 6.5.
The MAC Reverses Course
The bigger story, though, is what happened after the final whistle. Western Michigan president Russ Kavalhuna said Sunday he didn’t see anything wrong with how the extra second was awarded.
“I didn’t discern anything unfair or untoward,” Kavalhuna said.
That posture didn’t survive the week. By Tuesday, MAC commissioner Dr. Jon Steinbrecher had issued a formal statement declaring that replay protocol had not, in fact, been properly followed at the end of the game.
According to Steinbrecher, the rule requires officials to use the clock displayed on the program feed when determining whether time remained. Instead, the Big Ten’s replay crew used the clock embedded in its own replay system, which is a different source that, per the MAC’s account, produced a different result.
“Western Michigan would have won the game, 12-7,” Steinbrecher’s statement read, describing what should have happened under the correct protocol.
What the MAC Is Actually Asking For
This isn’t framed as a request to overturn the final score in the box score.
The MAC’s formal appeals are filed with both the NCAA FBS Oversight Committee and the College Football Playoff, asking those bodies to recognize Western Michigan as the winner specifically for the purposes of their own rankings, evaluations, and selection deliberations, along with whatever other corrective action falls within their authority.
“The Mid-American Conference has submitted formal appeals to the NCAA FBS Oversight Committee and the College Football Playoff,” the statement read. “The MAC is requesting that those bodies recognize Western Michigan as the actual winner of the game for purposes of their respective rankings, evaluations, and selection deliberations, and take such other corrective action as may be within their authority.”
In practice, that means the MAC isn’t trying to erase Michigan’s win from history so much as trying to make sure it doesn’t count in Michigan’s favor anywhere that actually matters for the postseason picture, which is the closest thing to a real penalty the conference has the standing to request.
There’s no clear precedent for either body granting a request like this once a game has already been played, officiated, and closed out under a conference-issued explanation.
The Big Ten’s original statement defending the call was detailed and specific, down to synchronized camera timing and cited rulebook language. The MAC’s new statement doesn’t dispute the officials’ judgment on the field so much as the mechanics of which clock feed they were technically supposed to be looking at. This distinction is likely to matter enormously to whichever committee ends up reviewing it, and to almost no one else.
Michigan, for its part, has bigger problems on the field regardless of how the appeal shakes out.
Whittingham’s team is now unranked, facing a red-hot Oklahoma squad as a home underdog, and trying to answer real questions about an offense that managed one touchdown in 60 minutes against a team picked to finish in the middle of the MAC.