"We Didn't Cheat!!" - Rich Reacts to Michigan's Dramatic & Controversial "Extra Second" Win

Michigan hired Kyle Whittingham to make the craziness stop. Rich, a Michigan alum, laid out the history to explain why that mattered, and then admitted that one weekend in, it had only gotten crazier.

Since the show came on the air, Rich said, it has been one thing after another. Brady Hoke wasn't wearing a headset. Jim Harbaugh took a while to find his footing, then hung a banner with asterisks all over it in the eyes of everyone else. Sherrone Moore was crying and cursing on TV while filling in for a suspended Harbaugh. Then last year was "an unmitigated disaster." Whittingham was supposed to be the steady, cool hand that made the cheating talk go away.

"And that didn't happen this weekend," Rich said. "A whole country is pissed off at Michigan. As if Michigan had anything to do with the clock management and how it all worked at the end of the game with the Big Ten officiating crew and the NBC Sports broadcast crew."

First things first, though. Rich did not pretend Michigan played well.

"Western Michigan outplayed and, I hate to say it, outcoached the University of Michigan," he said. The game "had Appalachian State on steroids written all over it."

Michigan scored on its first drive, but Rich didn't buy that Bryce Underwood looked different, despite what Todd Blackledge said on the broadcast. After that, it was like pulling teeth. Andrew Marsh, whom Rich considers one of the best receivers Michigan has ever had, muffed a punt. Michigan couldn't run it, couldn't pass it, and couldn't pull away. Western Michigan put together a 20-play possession that took the last nine minutes of the third quarter off the clock. "That's the stuff Michigan's supposed to do to Western Michigan in Michigan Stadium."

Rich was also frustrated by spots that went unreviewed and would have forced Western Michigan into difficult fourth-down decisions against a Michigan defense that was playing well despite being on the field constantly. His verdict was clear: "Western was 1,000% the better team on Saturday night. Much to my dismay and chagrin."

And then the ending. Underwood's first Hail Mary sailed out of the back of the end zone. The Big Ten reviewed the clock and put one second back. On the second try, Underwood threw it 60 yards in the air flat-footed, and JJ Buchanan made what Rich called "an incredible grab."

Whittingham, speaking afterward, said he glanced at the clock and was pretty sure there was a second left, but that it wasn't up to him. "Bryce threw a perfect ball," he said, and Buchanan "made a phenomenal catch. Didn't surprise me, that's who he is." His summary: "This game will go down in history, Michigan history. I don't know if it's in a positive way, but it'll go down in history for certain."

Rich was just glad it went down this way rather than the Appalachian State way, or the way Colorado beat Michigan on a Hail Mary in 1994.

He also had real admiration for Western Michigan head coach Lance Taylor, whose team "was ready to roll and had this thing wrapped and won." Taylor handled it with class, praising the officiating crew for handling multiple close calls and leaving the rest to the commissioner. "We can't control whether there's a second left on the clock or not," Taylor said. His team defended the first Hail Mary perfectly. "Unfortunately, we did not defend it as well the second time."

"He's awesome," Rich said. "The way he handled it, I'd want to throttle somebody."

Then Rich got to the clock itself. Everyone from TV analysts to Instagram was flipping out, and Mike Pereira chimed in that, based on what he knew, it shouldn't have happened. But Rich heard from someone intimately knowledgeable about the technology of clock management in football stadiums, who also happens to root for a school that hates Michigan.

Rich read the message on the air. The core of it: "Nobody gets that the TV game clock and the actual game clock are not connected to each other." The broadcast clock can have as much as two seconds of drift. The camera runs at a different frame rate than the stadium clock. Stadium technology is a hodgepodge of vendors whose systems don't talk to each other, partly by design, and the leagues are not technology companies.

According to the message, many broadcasts point a camera at the stadium clock and use computer vision to read it, which adds anywhere from half a second to two seconds of latency. In many cases, a human in the truck is starting and stopping the on-screen graphic. "The graphic that's on screen is a suggestion. It's not accurate," Rich read. The conclusion: there was probably more than half a second to a second and a half left. "As much as I hate to say it, Michigan deserved the second shot."

Someone on set who has worked hundreds of games, and who also does not like Michigan, agreed. Those on-screen clocks are not accurate to what you're seeing.

So what's the fix? Rich's answer was to modernize. There is apparently a separate clock for the replay crew that tracks tenths of a second, and many old college stadiums don't. "Switch to tenths of a second and light up the uprights when there's no time left," Rich said, like an NBA arena. Do it for the play clock too. "Let's cut the crap."

Because the stakes are real. "There's too many people that have money on the line, and there's too many people that think Michigan's cheating. Michigan didn't cheat," Rich said. "If Michigan cheated, we would have gotten the ball back a lot earlier. Multiple times."

Last, the celebration. Rich admitted his first reaction, as a 57-year-old who has watched Michigan football for 30 years, was a groan at students rushing the field against Western Michigan like they had won the Rose Bowl. Then he reconsidered. If it had been his first game as a freshman, he would have been on the field too.

These kids spent four quarters in that stadium watching what looked like the latest entry in a long line of miserable Michigan fan memes, like the student with his hands on his head after Michigan State's blocked punt return. Then they watched it flip. "You're a college kid. I'm not going to sit here and go, you should be better."

Underwood's celebration was a different matter. He is 19, and Rich, who has interviewed him twice and roots for him, thinks he is at a crossroads. Oklahoma is coming in, and "they will absolutely tear him apart if he can't figure things out pre-snap, post-snap." Whittingham has already said Underwood's leash isn't infinite.

Rich ended by borrowing a line Mike Tomlin once said on the show. He isn't apologizing for winning. "It stunk, the whole thing. Michigan didn't cheat, and the kids should go celebrate as much as they want."