Michigan’s controversial win adds to the nagging feeling college football just isn’t fair

Apparently, the Big House is the land where time stands still, where clocks melt like a Salvador Dalí painting and Deloreans wind back the minute hand just enough for the home team to get another chance. It’s where games end but somehow continue, where football takes 60 minutes and one second and days are 24 hours and one second. Where teams already afforded every advantage are now given the gift of imaginary time. That is the real travesty in Western Michigan’s 13-12 “loss” to Michigan. The Broncos seemed to have pulled off the biggest win in school history only for the official to add one second back on the clock for one last play, in which Michigan completed a Hail Mary pass for the win. This entire offseason has felt like a protracted exercise in gluttony. The conferences, schools, players and coaches who already have so much still want more, and when they can’t get it, they go to court to get their way. LSU poleaxed a team that used to win national championships on the regular, and somehow still thinks it needs the assistance of would-be-but-couldn’t-make-it NFL dudes. The SEC and Big Ten asked Congress for help to bail them out of the mess they had created, looking for ways to curtail outrageous spending and put guardrails up on the college athletics Autobahn. So, Congress came up with a solution, but the two leagues dithered over the particulars just long enough that the Protect College Sports Act never really had a chance. Look, the playing fields haven’t been even in decades, the gap between the moneyed schools widening with each passing season. But the advent of NIL has turned the gap into an unconquerable chasm. According to the U.S. Department of Education Equity in Athletics website, Western Michigan’s budget – for its entire department – is $8 million. Published reports estimate Michigan quarterback Bryce Underwood’s NIL package at between $10.5 million and $12.5 million over four years. When lettermen sweaters are stitched with gold threading and designed by Armani, it makes the whole thing a little harder to stomach. But all of that distaste was supposed to go away when the games began, when the undefeated and delicious product that is college football finally got the chance to shove the ancillary stuff back into the shadows. Instead, here we are, a week in and wondering why an official review is seemingly being run like a Louisiana courtroom. Why the eleventh hour came with an extra second, killing time proved impossible, and time fails to fly in Ann Arbor. So absurdly controversial was the final not-last second call, it’s temporarily dislodged Lane Kiffin from the spot of top of the most reviled man in football. “When I looked up at the clock, it was past zeroes,’’ said Western Michigan head coach Lance Taylor. Because it was. Time had officially run out on Michigan, the 24th-ranked Wolverines held to a baseball score by their directional little brother over in Kalamazoo. Underwood’s last-ditch pass sailed out of bounds, the clock clearly showing zero before the ball touched a Western Michigan defender’s hand. Officials called for an immediate review, a fair and reasonable request on a last-second play. And then they went into the Delorean and found a second that didn’t exist. Given a redo, Underwood made a hero 47-yard throw that JJ Buchanan somehow snatched out of traffic as he fell into the end zone. Late Saturday night, the Big Ten released a statement and explanation, saying that a Western Michigan player had touched the ball with one second left. They released video and audio to coincide with the statement, though it is not clear why the clock they used was entirely different than what was seen both on TV and in the stadium. It’s also difficult to tell, because the defender has his back to the camera, when exactly he touched the ball. At best it was a nanosecond or so of difference. The odds of the Big Ten overturning the call were always going to be steeper than the +27.5-point spread the Broncos faced against the Wolverines. If the league was to say the call was wrong, it would have to negate Michigan’s victory. And let’s be real: If Michigan didn’t vacate any wins after the whole Connor Stalions’ caper, they aren’t losing this one. Western Michigan and the MAC took the high road. Both said they accepted the Big Ten’s explanation, and Taylor was a model of decorum in his postgame comments. Still, it begs the public to dismiss something it saw with its own eyes. At the very least, in a world of technological advances, there needs to be better synchronization with the officials’ clock and the one in stadium. That doesn’t seem so much to ask. The real kick here is this isn’t even the first time this happened with Michigan. In 2005, officials found two seconds when the unranked Wolverines hosted No. 8 Penn State. Back then, they ruled the stadium clock stopped too early after Michigan was granted a timeout. On the next play, quarterback Chad Henne threw a 10-yard TD pass to Mario Manningham, giving the Wolverines the win. The difference is, Penn State went on to win the rest of its games and earn an invite to the Orange Bowl. There won’t be other chances like this for Western Michigan. The Broncos’ next opponent is Monmouth, followed by Rice and Boise State before they roll headlong into MAC play. This was their chance. To steal from another sport where Cinderella gets more of an opportunity than in college football, it was their one shining moment. Instead time, as it turns out, does wait for some teams. For Michigan, in the Big House, it happily stands still.