The debate has raged on about one second being added to the clock for Michigan football to run one final play in the game against Western Michigan. Not everyone has come to an agreement among fandoms and media pundits, but the Big Ten and the MAC appear to be aligned on the matter.
In the immediate aftermath of the game, Wolverines head coach Kyle Whittingham wouldn't have had any idea that there would be a huge fervor about it, but he's learning more about it now. Even so, he believes that the correct call was made, not just because his team ended up on top, but because of the technology and the review of the call in real time.
"Well, I guess they have this Hawkeye -- is it called the Hawkeye system? I was unaware of that," Whittingham said.
"But as I looked, I knew it was close. When the ball sailed back to the end zone, I glanced up at the clock, and it was just ticking to zero, and somebody had touched it. I didn't know who had touched it, but apparently it was a defender that had already established an out-of-bounds position. So I just used -- I'm assuming they got it right. They looked at it, and their technology that they have is very advanced, I guess.
"And I think everyone's fairly satisfied with the explanation. I am, and I think Western Michigan came out with a statement that, hey, we're not gonna question this anymore. They gave us a fairly transparent answer, and we'll move forward."
The argument, perhaps, could be that Michigan should have done more to ensure that it didn't end up in a position where the game could end controversially. Sure, the Wolverines capitalized on that last-second play, with a 47-yard Hail Mary, but Whittingham noted that the Broncos were the reason why Michigan struggled as much as anything.
"I'm not blaming anybody, but I think Western deserves a lot of credit, cuz they did a nice job with their structure on defense," Whittingham said. "They didn't do anything different than what we'd seen on tape last year. So it was not an incident caused by surprise; a lot of movement, zone coverage, very little man coverage, covered two roofs, and zone pressure, zone coverage behind it. So there was really no surprises there. So they did a nice job, and they tackled well. We broke a few tackles, but not nearly as many as I thought we would."
Michigan has an even bigger test forthcoming with Oklahoma coming to town on Saturday. Kickoff is set for 12:14 p.m. EDT at The Big House.
This article originally appeared on Wolverines Wire: Kyle Whittingham weighs in on controversial ending to Michigan-WMU
