Notre Dame coach Marcus Freeman wasted not a single second blaming a clock glitch for his team's loss at BYU.
Instead, he spent the bye week focused on mistakes to get the Fighting Irish back on track.
While Big 12 officials acknowledged last week that the refs erred by not putting 1 second back on the clock, giving Notre Dame another play to keep its 15-game winning streak alive. Instead, they allowed time to expire and the Irish wound up losing 28-24
to the then eighth-ranked Cougars.
“I reminded our guys that sometimes you've got to lose to win,” Freeman said Monday, the first time he's spoken publicly since the Big 12's announcement. “There's lessons in losing that, if you learn from them, will help you be better prepared for the next opportunity that presents itself. Our job is to learn from the many lessons I think that loss taught us, and I use the 1 second as an example. One second represents one more play and we can't use it as an excuse. We've got to use it as a reminder that there were many one plays that if we win that play, it changes the outcome of the game.”
Had Notre Dame won in Provo, Utah, it might have ascended from No. 2 to No. 1 on one of college football's wackiest weekends. Instead, they fell to No. 4 after five of the top seven teams lost. It marked the first time that happened since the poll began in 1936.
BYU, meanwhile, rose to No. 2 only to fall back to No. 8 this week following a 39-31 loss at UCF last weekend. Notre Dame fell one more spot this week to No. 5.
“Following the Big 12’s review of the final play of Saturday’s Notre Dame-BYU game, it was determined that time remained on the clock when the ball hit the ground and the play was incorrectly cleared by the replay officiating crew,” conference officials said in a statement following the Oct. 17 game's conclusion. "The Conference will conduct a complete review of its end-of-game officiating process in advance of next week’s games.”
“Time remained on the clock when the ball hit the ground, and the play was incorrectly cleared by the replay officiating crew," the Big 12 said in a statement last week.
Still, the Irish (6-1) remain in solid playoff position following their bye week. They'll renew their annual rivalry with Navy (2-5) on Saturday in Foxborough, Massachusetts.
It's not the first time Notre Dame has dealt with late-game adversity during Freeman's tenure.
In September 2023, the Irish had 10 defenders on the field when the Buckeyes scored on a 1-yard run to take a 17-14 lead with just over a minute to go. The Buckeyes won 17-14.
Last year, a botched snap on an extra point allowed Texas A&M to rally for a 41-40 win by tying the score with an 11-yard TD pass with 13 seconds and then making the extra point to take the lead. There also was a controversial no-call for holding on the Aggies' final offensive play.
“Every week matters, and I think we've learned that valuable lesson throughout the course of my head coaching career,.” Freeman said. “If you don't respect the opponent, you will get humbled. There's many examples I can give you, so our guys have no concern that our guys will be looking past this opportunity.”
And that includes talking any more about whether or not the Irish should have gotten one more play inside BYU's 10-yard line on Oct. 17.
“I don't know in that situation that our guys in the press box could say that the ball hit the ground with 1 second left,” Freeman said. “I think it's something that you've got to trust the officials and the replay officials to make sure they get that call right. There's got to be some type of systematic thing where that mistake doesn't happen. But you know the minute that game was over it was complete chaos, like people on the field. They said it was over and I don't anybody knew there was a second left until hours, maybe at least an hour, later. I didn't know until somebody told me on the plane flight home. So I don't know if that's something we can truly monitor with the human eye. The head of replay, I think, is the one that said it's over, so there's nothing you can do in the moment.”
___
Sign up for Top 25 poll alerts here, visit the Top 25 here and see AP’s full college football coverage here
