It was a bad call and bad calls are part of the game, but it was only one of several things that did not go the Irish's way in the first half. The key things in my mind were (in no particular order):

That overturned replay

Tillery's roughing the passer mistake, which gave them the opportunity to make that circus catch in the endzone just before halftime. Had Tillery laid off the QB, the 1st half probably would have ended with either a hail mary or an unlikely field goal attempt.

Claypool's dropped pass on the opening drive.

We fumbled on each of the first 2 drives (and lost one of them).

Failed to pick up 3 yards on 2 plays when we had 3rd & 3 at the Clemson 34.

Love's injury, and the inability to compensate for it.


Make no mistake, Clemson was the more talented team with a superior coaching staff. ND needed to play mistake free and get some breaks in order for this to be a tight game into the 2nd half, but neither of those things happened. Given the hindsight of the subsequent Clemson-Bama game, if they played the ND-Clemson game 10 times, my hunch is that most of the games would have had Clemson pulling away in the 3rd quarter. In this case Clemson got some breaks and were able to pull away in the 2nd quarter. Whatever.

is the game. It was our chance to hang in there. Against Clemson we needed some breaks. In spite of our fumbles and dropped conversion passes we could have been going up 10-3 with our worst plays behind us.

I agree we may not have won. My only point in all this is how about an explanation for Jon Bible on why he made the judgment that it was clearly out of bounds, indisputable. It was a HORRIBLE call and it hurt ND

Our offense fucking blew. But it was a bad reversal. College replay officials have no understanding of the standard of review.

largely because each conference is responsible for hiring, training and retaining their staffs and each will have a different focus/emphasis, etc.

Oh yeah that's crystal clear... my fucking ass

holding the ball out there instead, and it was called not a touchdown, as a ND fan would you argue that the ball crossed the plane?
I understand what the argument is here, but I see the tip of the ball on the line. In the other scenario I present, I would say it is touchdown (take out if he was down or not).

I think that distinction is a pretty big deal here.

not out of bounds.

Was Love injured on the special teams fumble? I hadn’t heard when it happened.

Give me a break

even early ones. Of course there’s no way to know, but as some of the ND players said after the game, it felt like ND was ready to pounce at that point before the reversal. It’s not hard to imagine that ND would have gotten a very helpful boost of confidence had that sequence gone differently. I wouldn’t say that if ND had looked overmatched or unable to move the ball throughout the rest of the game, but ND moved the ball on most drives and failed to make the plays at every key moment.

a TD then goldilocks and company would have been rattled. SACK...FUMBLE...POUNCE

punt, and then had the ball with great field position and then fumbled on the first play?

Was that the replay refs fault as well? Did we get screwed on that one? That sequence certainly hurt our confidence.

We have nobody to blame but ourselves.

I was surprised to see the replay show that Book fumbled, but in order to overturn the call there needs to be clear evidence of a recovery. After the fumble, you couldn't see the ball until the Clemson DL stood up with the ball sitting on the ground. There was a clear opportunity for a recovery, there was no clear recovery. Then later in the game Mack made the catch, made a football move (turning upfield with possession), and was ruled incomplete. None of the calls affected the outcome of the game, even cumulatively, but all three were egregiously incorrect and all three went against us.

we completely fuck up and cannot execute the basics of the game and it's the refs fault (of course).

"Oh, but I said none of the calls affected the outcome of the game!"

that's a pretty consistent message that I've heard most successful coaches/leaders harp on a lot these past few years and I agree with it.

Truthfully, it's probably just a ripoff of what Holtz/Saban/Meyer would do.

... when we were methodically driving into Clemson territory and your favorite 5-star couldn't hang on to a crucial catch to help extend a drive?

Although I think replay got that one wrong too - but jesus christmas, hang on to the damn football.

when we had the easy third down conversion and our wr just dropped the ball at the sticks.

Motherfucking replay refs screwed us on that one!

Clemson would have just crushed us for the full second half. Book couldn’t do crap all game and that wouldn’t have changed and we still wouldn’t have scored near enough points.