[BostonCard]

*Much of the media still refuses to understand that while, yes, McCaffrey lost possession before his foot touched out of bounds, that's not the end of the matter.  (1) He lost possession while in bounds; (2) he then stepped out of bounds while still touching the football, though he had lost control; and (3) the Wazzu player gained possession.  Per the rules, the second an out of bounds player touches the ball, it's a dead ball, the same as if McCaffrey had fumbled it out of bounds, making the Wazzu recovery irrelevant.  Some of the conference officials made mention of this during the game on Twitter and the like, and that penetrated to some media, but folks like Wilner hammered on this for days and still occasionally bring it up as evidence of bad Pac-12 officiating this year.  Sorry for the rant, as I know you all know this, but the seemingly willful blindness to understand the rules on that play still gets under my skin.

Wilner seems to go out of his way to talk about how egregious calls were that went in our favor.  In addition to hammering on the out of bounds call, he hammered on Reid's block during McCaffrey's kickoff return for a touchdown even though there was no holding (just a kicker being totally dominated by a good block).  He also hammered on a pass interference against Notre Dame that was in our favor (though he didn't explain why), when a) there was definite contact, b) because of the interference, our tight end had to jump outwards to catch the ball instead of jumping upwards, c) because he jumped out, he landed out of bounds.

I think Wilner tries really hard (sometimes a bit too hard) not to appear to be a homer for Stanford (and I think Cal fans feel the same way about him going out of his way to criticize the Bears).

BC

[BostonCard]

*Much of the media still refuses to understand that while, yes, McCaffrey lost possession before his foot touched out of bounds, that's not the end of the matter.  (1) He lost possession while in bounds; (2) he then stepped out of bounds while still touching the football, though he had lost control; and (3) the Wazzu player gained possession.  Per the rules, the second an out of bounds player touches the ball, it's a dead ball, the same as if McCaffrey had fumbled it out of bounds, making the Wazzu recovery irrelevant.  Some of the conference officials made mention of this during the game on Twitter and the like, and that penetrated to some media, but folks like Wilner hammered on this for days and still occasionally bring it up as evidence of bad Pac-12 officiating this year.  Sorry for the rant, as I know you all know this, but the seemingly willful blindness to understand the rules on that play still gets under my skin.

Wilner seems to go out of his way to talk about how egregious calls were that went in our favor.  In addition to hammering on the out of bounds call, he hammered on Reid's block during McCaffrey's kickoff return for a touchdown even though there was no holding (just a kicker being totally dominated by a good block).  He also hammered on a pass interference against Notre Dame that was in our favor (though he didn't explain why), when a) there was definite contact, b) because of the interference, our tight end had to jump outwards to catch the ball instead of jumping upwards, c) because he jumped out, he landed out of bounds.

I think Wilner tries really hard (sometimes a bit too hard) not to appear to be a homer for Stanford (and I think Cal fans feel the same way about him going out of his way to criticize the Bears).

BC