Michigan Alum Rich Reacts to the MAC’s Request to Have WMU’s Loss to Wolverines Overturned

The Michigan clock saga refuses to end. "It's timeless," Rich said.

At first, the MAC seemed satisfied. The conference and Western Michigan both said they had received the Big Ten's explanation and were good. Then the MAC came back asking for more, requesting that the result be reversed because protocols weren't followed.

The NCAA's answer, as Rich summarized it: that's not going to happen. Even though, the room noted, it kind of admitted the protocols weren't followed.

Rich acknowledged he is biased here, since his team got the extra shot. And he had a problem with how the extra second is being framed. "Everybody's acting as if it was a tush push from the half yard line instead of a 60-yard heave that one would think the other team should defend." He understands the counter. Western Michigan shouldn't have had to defend anything, and should already have been in the locker room "with a lifetime of memories and an amazing blue pelt on the Kalamazoo wall."

What the NCAA did do was send out a memo from its national coordinator of officials, Ron Snodgrass, approved by the NCAA's secretary-rules editor. Rich read it on the air. The official time for all college football games is the time on the in-stadium game clock. When replay review requires restoring or adjusting time, the replay official will use the embedded game clock in the program feed, and if the broadcaster can't provide one, the game clock graphic shown on the broadcast. The protocol should be followed consistently everywhere.

Then Rich added his own line. "Forget about the fact that the game clock is inaccurate. Oh, wait. I added that part."

He sent the memo to the friend who had already explained to him how broadcast clocks work. The friend's reply was withering. "They are literally saying they're going to violate the rule book, because we now know that the game clock which is in the stadium and the TV aren't synced," Rich read. "So they are proactively saying they're just going to go with the less accurate clock because it's what the audience is seeing."

The kicker: "So for full transparency, we're going to go with something that's flawed. Only the NCAA."

So why can't the replay clock simply be shown? Rich's answer was that the technology to connect the most accurate clock to what viewers see has to exist, and he suspects money and existing systems are in the way. His friend described it as a cable connection. Mike corrected that it's actually Cat5, which Rich clarified was not Karl-Anthony Towns with five rebounds.

Rich's bigger point is that this was a freak confluence. Somehow a clock flaw lasted the entire game and the football gods threaded the needle in the final second. "I don't think this is going to happen again," he said.

Western Michigan moves on to Monmouth. Michigan has a much bigger problem, with Oklahoma coming to town. If Michigan plays the way it did against Western Michigan, Rich fears it becomes "snackables for Venables."

As a Michigan guy, Rich said he has all the hope in the world in the coaching staff and the kid to find the reserve and the study time. And if anyone wants Michigan punished as though it lost, he pointed out that the voters already did it, dropping Michigan out of the top 25.

He also rejected the idea that anything was fixed. "It's a fix for the people who believe the fix is in when there's a clock we're not seeing that conveniently gets brought out so one team can get another shot" at a tiny chance. Underwood threw from his own 40, dropping back and firing 60 yards in the air flat-footed, "which is why he's getting 11 million bucks in NIL money." What Michigan needs is that throw with more touch, more timing and more command against defenses that disguise coverage, which Rich expects Oklahoma to do. "Oh my god."

Someone noted Underwood is the starting quarterback "for now," the words Kyle Whittingham used. Rich wondered whether Whittingham could become the first coach of this era to inherit a quarterback with a large NIL price tag and tell the people paying it that he's the backup, something Josh Pate discussed on the show Tuesday.

That prompted a sharp question from the table. Are the collectives now deciding the starting lineup? Money talks, came one reply. Rich disagreed. "Wins and losses talk. And I think that's what will end up ruling the day."

Or, he added, the kid finds it, which Rich is rooting for because he likes Underwood a lot.

"Hope is not a strategy," came the response from the table.

"Is it not?" Rich said.