To manage or influence skillfully, especially in an unfair manner; that is the definition of manipulation. Use it in a sentence: The referees manipulated the matchup between Eastern Michigan and Ball State’s football teams.
Coming into Saturday’s game, the Eagles had their entire season to play for and an undefeated home record to protect. One win away from being bowl eligible and after Northern Illinois defeated Toledo 63-60 on Tuesday, a shot at the Mid-American Conference was up for grabs. Needless to say, it was hard to watch it all get stolen by, not the Cardinals, but the Zebras.
In a high-scoring game in which the teams matched up so well, it was expected that the game would come down to the wire, and only the team with all of the pieces in place would be able to win.
You could argue that Ball State rightfully deserved to win, and the Eagles blew their own chances. Yes, there were passes early on that should have been caught. Yes, the Eagles should have went for the end zone on their last drive instead of settling for the field goal. EMU coach Ron English is even willing to take the blame.
“This game is my fault,” English said. “I knew I had this game circled for months, and I didn’t get it done.”
Missed opportunities
All of these things could have been the reason for the Eagles’ defeat, but none of them really was. English could have made better decisions, Nick Olds could have caught a key pass and Alex Gillett could have ran it in for a touchdown. But would any of this mean a thing if, in the end, the officials were set on forcing a BSU victory? No.
One bad call happens every now and again, but two bad calls along with extra minutes in less than a full quarter of action brings us to a rather fine line.
It all started with a pass interference call on EMU’s Marlon Pollard with just under 12 minutes to play. The call was far from believable as both Pollard and BSU’s Torieal Gibson were both hand checking, not to mention, Pollard turned his entire body to face the ball, making him an eligible receiver. To put the icing on that cake, the yellow flag was thrown by the referee behind the line scrimmage not the referee less than 3 feet away from the play.
Can’t stop the Cardinals
After the pass interference, BSU was able to march down the field to Eastern’s 6-yard line before the Eagles forced a field goal.
On the Eagles’ next drive, multiple carries for more than 10 yards put the Eagles at Ball State’s 6-yard line. An additional two carries by Dominque White put the ball inside the 1 and from there the Eagles forced BSU to burn its remaining two timeouts and attempted to run the clock out.
EMU’s efforts to give the Cardinals minimum time to create a scoring drive without timeouts was hindered by who else but the men in black and white stripes. On both of the Eagles’ next downs, two seconds would be added to the game clock.
Then comes the Eagles’ decision to take a delay of game before kicking a field goal. The clock ran down to 1:13 and the kick was good, but before the kickoff another glance at the game clock would show you that five seconds had been tacked on for the Cardinals, giving them 1:18 to make a miraculous win.
That wasn’t the end though. On the Cardinals’ second play of the drive, unnecessary roughness was called against EMU’s Justin Cudworth. And I guess it was just a coincidence that the penalty put Ball State in field-goal range right?
As if it wasn’t bad enough for the Eagles to watch what they have worked hard to obtain, this season got snatched on Saturday. Something similar happened two weeks ago when the Eagles played host to the Western Michigan Broncos.
Refs decide the outcome
In the end of the fourth quarter, Western needed a touchdown to overcome the Eagles’ 14-10 lead. A pass interference was called (does that seem familiar or what?) on Marcell Rose despite the fact that there was about 2 feet between Rose and the intended receiver and no contact made whatsoever. The penalty moved the Broncos up 15 yards to EMU’s 14-yard line.
On the next play, unsportsmanlike conduct (and you can be the judge of that call) on Justin Cudworth moved the Broncos up half the distance to the goal, and the ball was placed on EMU’s 7-yard line. The penalty was then reviewed, and it seemed as though it would be declined, but a second review resulted in the confirmation of the call.
The difference in this game? EMU bounced back. The Eagles were able to hold off WMU’s offense on fourth and goal from the 1-yard line to seal the victory.
And no, it didn’t just so happen that all of this occurred in the fourth quarter of each game.
It’s one thing for the Eagles to get comfortable after defeating the other two MAC teams in Michigan and slacking off as a result. It’s another thing for Ball State to come in and outplay and outcoach the Eagles. But it’s a whole other playing field when the referees decide to put the fate of a team in their own hands and manipulate the outcome.
