Somehow, a 39-game winning streak ending via blowout wasn’t the weirdest thing to happen during an atypically timed college football Saturday. Instead, the crown for most bizarre play belonged to a game between Eastern Washington and Idaho.
Early in the fourth quarter, Eastern Washington kicker Seth Harrison missed a field goal attempt to keep the score tied at 21-21. At least, that’s how the play went down on the official box score.
Unofficially, and more accurately, Harrison made the chip shot that should have given his team the lead, but there was one small problem: the official under the goal posts wasn’t looking.
Further review appeared to show the official was adjusting his mask as the play took place, and he didn’t even seem to look up as the kick sailed through the uprights. For an official not looking up, the kick would look like a miss because it bounced as if it hit the right goal post. In reality, the football bounced off the bottom of the Kibbie Dome’s large scoreboard placed just above the goal posts.
Even after a review, the officials ruled the kick was no good.
You can see the surreal sequence of events play out here:
Appears that a FG in the Eastern Washington game was ruled no good even though it clearly went through the uprights.
The ref didn’t watch it, thought it went off the upright, but it bounced off another object pic.twitter.com/12GdDBxWNT
— Unnecessary Roughness (@UnnecRoughness) February 28, 2021
Officiating a football game is harder than it looks, but most fans can probably agree that the easiest part is looking up and deciding if a ball went to the left or right of a large yellow pole. Apparently, this crew wasn’t up for that task.
The “missed” field goal was eventually followed by an Idaho touchdown, with the Vandals winning 28-21 to open their season. Who knows how the game would have played out had Eastern Washington taken the lead early in the fourth quarter.
More from Yahoo Sports:
