Over at the Orange County Register‘s USC football blog, Scott Reid writes that the “Bush Push Era” is officially over, after Notre Dame scored a crucial two-point conversion — ultimately preserving overtime, and allowing them to beat Washington — on a four-yard, uncalled “assisting the runner” penalty:
As you recall (and the Whining Irish certainly won’t let you forget) top-ranked USC escaped South Bend with a 34-31 victory on October 15, 2005 after Trojan tailback Reggie Bush pushed quarterback Matt Leinart into the end zone from a yard-out for the game-winning touchdown.
The Whining Irish immediately screamed foul, claiming that the Bush Push should have resulted in a five-yard penalty.
According to NCAA rules “the runner shall not grasp a teammate; and no other player of his team shall grasp, push, lift or charge into him to assist him in forward progress.” The rule, however, is rarely enforced, a point the Whining Irish forget to mention.
Whether or not God’s Team was robbed officially became a moot point on Saturday when seemingly everybody wearing blue and gold with the possible exception of Charlie Weis (bad knee, remember) pushed, shoved and ultimately rolled Robert Hughes into the end zone for a fourth quarter two-point conversion in the Whining Irish’s 37-30 overtime victory against Washington.
So it’s official: the Whining Irish have lost any right to pout about the Bush Push.
Heh.
Personally, my immediate reaction to the “Hughes Push” was that it was the most impressive thing I’ve seen the Notre Dame offensive line do in several years. The similarity to the Bush Push didn’t occur to me until hours later. But, now that it’s come to my attention, I’m terribly amused. Bwahahahaha.
Anyway, needless to say, the refs did the right thing by not making the call. Just like on October 15, 2005. 🙂
Fight On, Trojans! Beat the Irish!
P.S. Although it’s “Hate Week” — or “Hate Fortnight,” in this case — I, as an Irish alum as well as a Trojan alum, don’t endorse Reid’s use of the phrase “Whining Irish.” (Though there certainly has been a fair bit of whining about this particular issue. But I can’t condone its use as a general descriptor.)
I do, however, condone and endorse this tweet by Michael Walsh: “I now humbly request that all Notre Dame fans forever more kindly please STFU about the ‘Bush Push’. Fair enough?”
P.P.S. You can see the play in the video below. Fast forward to the 7-minute mark.
Pingback: Tweets that mention The Hughes Push -- Topsy.com
Seriously, the “Whining Irish” is lame.
I prefer the Frightened Irish.
It was a penalty back when USC did and again when ND did it here. Should have been called both times. What should not have been called (and luckily did not affect the outcome) was that roughing the snapper penalty.
dante, i’ll spot you the roughing the snapper penalty. In return the Huskies get the TD back that shouldn’t have been overturned.
David,
Pleas check the evidence. This picture clearly shows that Polk was down and it was the right call.
http://bluegraysky.blogspot.com/
With that said, I think Hughes was down on the 2pt conversionand at the very least, that play should have been reviewed.
That picture is also taken at an angle. The ball is on ot close to the
goall line. It’s definitely not indisputable enough to merit overturning the call on the field. I can also bring up the clip that shows that Hughes was down PLUS momentum had been stopped before he was shoved forward. The refs should have blown the whistle anyway.
I’m not sure if you read the whole BGS post, David, but I think it’s a pretty good, even-handed analysis. Contra magistraight, BGS acknowledges that the refs got the Polk call wrong. But they also point out that this error is “consistent with college officials’ practice of disregarding the standard of review set forth in the rulebook. Every time an official say words to the effect that, ‘Replay confirms the call on the field’ (a statement that has no meaning under the actual rules), that official is telling you that he doesn’t understand the replay rules. Notre Dame has been burned numerous times by replay officials applying de novo review. I suppose such review was bound to help the Irish eventually.”
The post then proceeds to discuss the absolutely bogus “roughing the snapper” make-up call (you’re not being fair or balanced, David, in downplaying the bogusness of that call — it was utterly ridiculous, not merely “weak”) and how that led to UW having six shots at the end zone, which, if they’d taken advantage of one, would have led to the replay review error HELPING the Huskies, by taking a ton of time off the clock and making it almost impossible for the Irish to get two scores.
All in all, a good post, not skirting the issue, but also, I think, putting it in a reasonable perspective. I understand your frustration, David, I really do — but when the bad call (which, let’s remember, was actually probably the right call factually, but the wrong call ‘legally,’ under the applicable standard of review) was immediately followed by your team having six opportunities to score from the 1 yard line, three of which were the direct result of another egregious officiating error, you can’t say the officials “decided the game.” That’s just not true. Yes, the refs made a bad call that hurt Washington badly (as things worked out – it also could have helped them, as noted above), but the Huskies were not denied the chance to win the game on the field. They had that chance and they failed to take advantage of it.
P.S. By the way, I confess that my original tweet about the sequence of events we’re discussing, referring to the replay call as “questionable” and the roughing call as “phantom,” wrongly understated things in the opposite direction. When I tweeted that, I hadn’t looked at the replay issue in great detail (because I had flipped to the LSU-Georgia game during the review, assuming the call would stand based on what the announcers said). So I didn’t have enough information at that time to call it anything worse than “questionable.” I now acknowledge that it was wrong, though again, it appears that it was probably factually the right result, but nevertheless “legally” the wrong call.
Actually, by not reviewing the two-point conversion the Huskies were pretty much denied the chance to win the game on the field.
As for the phantom call of roughing the snapper, yes it was absolutely bogus, I have no problem with that. But it pales in comparison to the bogus TD reversal because of the results. If the roughing the snapper had ended up with the Huskies getting the TD the outrage of Irish fans would be justified (well except that it technically would have negated a wrong that went in their favor, but two wrongs don’t make a right, etc. etc.).
The Huskies blew their own chances to score, I accept that.
The call to overturn the touchdown wasn’t questionable, it was terrible.
The roughing the snapper call was also bad.
The lack of review on the 2-pt was again not questionable but terrible as well.
I actually think you have a bigger beef about the failure to review the 2-pt conversion (on was-he-down grounds, not “Bush Push” grounds, of course) than on the overturned TD, because it comes closer to truly “deciding the game.” But even then, no, UW was not denied the chance to win the game on the field. They still could have scored a TD, or won in overtime.
Here’s the thing, David. Bad calls fundamentally change the course of games all the time. All. The. Time. If, every time that happened, we said the officials “decided the game,” the officials would decide a whole helluva lot of games. But that’s not a very fun way to look at sports, and it certainly isn’t how the players look at it. So I take a different approach. I try to strictly limit the circumstances under which I will say that the officials “decided the game” to circumstances where a bad call (or series of bad calls) not only turned things in one team’s favor, but turned them in such a way that the other team had no real opportunity to fight back. Thus, for instance, I give Texas full credit for its Rose Bowl win, even though the Longhorns got an illegitimate TD because of a bad call, and USC was probably denied a TD because of another bad call, because you know what? Even though that’s an enormous 14-point swing, in the end, USC had every opportunity to win, and so did Texas, and Texas won. So I’m not going to sit here and blame the refs. It’s not fun, it’s not good for my mental health, and it would make me sound like a whining sore loser. So I acknowledge the refs’ mistakes, but I don’t use phrases like “the refs decided the game” or “why can’t they let the players decide it on the field” unless those phrases are REALLY TRUE. Which, sometimes, occasionally, they are. But not usually. And not in this instance.
Now, I don’t mean to suggest that, if the screwed-over team still technically, in some remote chance, could hypothetically have won, that means the officials didn’t decide it. What I mean is that, if they had a realistic, honest-to-goodness opportunity to still win, and weren’t basically placed in a hole by the refs that it was virtually impossible to get out of, then the officials didn’t decide it. The officials influenced it, and that’s unfortunate, but the players decided it.
In the end, in this game, the players decided it. The officials messed some stuff up, absolutely. But the sequence of events wasn’t so borked by the officials that both teams didn’t have a fair chance to win. So while it’s fair to be annoyed at the refs, you’ve got to keep it in perspective. Otherwise you’ve got such a loose standard for blaming-the-refs that you’re inevitably going to feel like the refs are constantly victimizing your teams. You’ve got to be a little more philosophical than that, and recognize the difference between true highway robbery — true game-deciding calls from which there is no coming back — and mere officiating mistakes that, while maddening, are still a part of the game, and that a good team should be able to overcome.
P.S. The same goes for the Irish fans who are convinced that ND would have beaten Michigan if they hadn’t been jobbed by Big Ten refs, blah blah blah.
P.P.S. What happened to UW against BYU last year, with the Locker excessive celebration bullshit and the blocked extra point, comes closer to meeting my standard. Yeah, technically the kicker still could have made the extra point, but the refs really put the Huskies in a terrible position there, on the basis of just a horribly shitty call, and the die was basically cast when the call was made. If you want to say that call “decided the game,” I have no problem with that. But here, it’s way too much of a stretch, given all the events that happened afterward. (And also given that, in your best case scenario, Washington takes a two-possession lead with more than 7 minutes left… the game is NOT over at that point.)
I’m starting to get the impression that the NCAA/NFL actually like these de novo reviews. It sort of adds excitement to the game. If the stated standard (only overturn obvious errors) were routinely applied, it would take no time at all to determine that Polk’s touchdown didn’t meet the standard, and the game would quickly continue with a UW touchdown.
But we’re all conditioned now to expect that just about anything reviewable will be subject to de novo review. So reviews like the Polk touchdown become exciting. Frustrating if you’re the Huskies on Saturday. But de novo review will smile on them from time to time too.
Neither the NCAA nor the NFL can come out and formally endorse de novo review, or that would quickly put both leagues on a slippery slope to video replay of just about everything (a disaster when first tried 20 years ago). If you are a Washington fan you hate the outcome such as the Polk TD. But no one can really deny that it adds to the suspense. Is that a good thing? I guess that depends on whether you think sports serve a greater purpose than bread and circuses…
David,
Your coach is just as much to blame as the refs for “denying the Huskies the chance to win the game on the field” (which is a joke considering the multiple chances to win the game after the BOGUS roughing the snapper call. Remember, Sark didn’t challenge the two-point conversion!
Weis echoed this sentiment in his presser:
Q. The two-point conversion, after seeing it, are you surprised they didn’t review that?
COACH WEIS: Hey, there’s challenges. That’s what challenges are for. You want them — both teams had challenges available. You can challenge a call if you think the call is wrong.
Weis is full of it. There is no replay in the stadium. How exactly are the coaches going to see that the play needs to be reviewed given where it was on the field without a replay?
If you want to argue the TD reversal wasn’t game changing because of the opportunities, fine, I’ll give you that (and I acknowledge some terrible play calling by the UW staff on those short yardage plays). But the idea that the coaches had any evidence to call for a review? Thats even more BOGUS thant he roughing the snapper call (which was technically correct atleast, shouldn’t have been called, but it was a valid technical call).
http://hotdogandfriends.com/2009/10/03/notre-dames-2-point-conversion-not-even-close/
David,
How do teams EVER “see that the play needs to be reviewed” such that a challenge flag should be thrown? This is an honest question; I don’t know. But I’ve always assumed that they’ve got someone in a booth somewhere, watching the game, and radioing the sideline with “yea” or “nay” on throwing the challenge flag. The notion, which you seem to be advancing, that teams generally decide whether to throw the challenge flag based on a coach on the sideline squinting and looking at the replay on the jumbotron (in stadiums that have jumbotrons) seems fanciful to me. But I could be wrong.
Moreover, even if you’re right on that point, which I don’t think you are, wouldn’t it make sense to throw a challenge flag on that 2-point conversion play, even WITHOUT the benefit of watching a replay before throwing the flag? I mean, for goodness sake, it was visually obvious, in real time, that that was a highly unusual way of getting a touchdown, with a real possibility that the runner’s forward progress was halted, and/or he was assisted into the end zone, and/or his knee was down. In a crucial, potentially game-determining situation like that, I’d think the odds would heavily weigh in favor of throwing the challenge flag, even if based on nothing more than the real-time visual input of watching the play and thinking, “Hey, that looked really fishy, and it’s an incredibly important play, and I’ve got this challenge flag in my pocket.”
P.S. What do you mean when you say the roughing-the-snapper call was “technically correct”? He didn’t rough the snapper. He was called for roughing the snapper. Ergo, the call was wrong in every way a call can be wrong — technically, factually, legally, morally, ethically. 🙂
P.P.S. In the post you linked, the comment by “Beef’s dad” asks the critical question we’re all missing:
He’s referring to the UW-BYU game last year, of course. His observation raises the possibility that it isn’t that Notre Dame is “God’s Team” — it’s just that God hates the Huskies. 🙂
P.P.P.S. David, what are you thoughts on Big D’s comment re: Sark?
Brendan, challenging the play and losing meant we would lose our last time out, something that could be very critical on the ensuing drive with little time left. This is from Bob Condotta’s Husky footbal blog
Coaches can also call for reviews on the field. But Notre Dame doesn’t have a replay board in the stadium so the coaches couldn’t quickly look up there to see if it warranted a challenge, as they can in most stadiums. UW coach Steve Sarkisian mentioned that later saying “there’s no replay in the stadium so we have to go with what they said.”
So no, it did not appear that they coaches had any way of seeing whether the play should be reviewed or not.
He’s referring to the UW-BYU game last year, of course. His observation raises the possibility that it isn’t that Notre Dame is “God’s Team” — it’s just that God hates the Huskies. 🙂
Well Notre Dame and BYU can’t BOTH be God’s teams if God is exclusive. If he’s not then God loves ALL teams.
No, its that those teams have the big bucks to bribe the officials, duh 🙂
As for Sark, I allready mentioned above that i thought the play calling on the short down situations was bad. You don’t call a sneak on a wet grass field like that. No traction. We should have called for sweeps, short passes, or a run up the middle from further back which would have given Polk a chance to leap the pile as the d-line was submarining (very low blocks).
I would like to ammend my earlier post. The Bush push was a penalty in 2005. The “Hughes push” was not. In 2008, the NCAA rules committee changed the language of the rule to read that offensive players may not pull a ball carrier into the end zone. Thus, pushing Hughes in is no longer a penalty. In 2005, it most certainly was though.
It might seem a little stupid that one day it is a penalty, and another day not, but it is.
Assisting the runner is still against the rules, but forget about that since the ND ball carrier was clearly down before he crossed the goal line, and the Huskies player was clearly in to score the Touchdown that was reversed. Who really cares since UW is irrelevant anyway. I’m glad Purdue, Michigan St. and UW were all jobbed out to Notre Dame because if they calls went the right way ND would be 1-4 instead of 4-1 and Charlie Weis might be in danger of getting fired.
If racist Notre Dame fans use the term “Smoke and Mirrors” to justify criticism of Ty Willingham’s 8-0 start as head coach of the Irish then you guys know exactly how Weis has been winning this season.