The two worst calls in college football yesterday both happened in the Big Ten, one of them a REALLY boneheaded call and the other a call the rulebook says wasn't a bad call.
The latter happened in Iowa City, where a go-ahead punt return to the house by the Hawkeyes was wiped out when officials ruled the kid who ran it back waved for a fair catch. This meant Minnesota won 12-10 and got to claim Floyd of Rosedale, the bronze pig that goes to the winner of Iowa-Minnesota game each year.
(Also the most hilariously awesome rivalry trophy in college football. And, no, the Blob will entertain no arguments to the contrary.)
The problem here is the kid in question, Cooper DeJean, only made a vague sort of waving motion with his left arm, as if signaling to shoo everyone else away from the punt.
He didn't raise his hand and wave it. He didn't make any motion that even remotely resembled a traditional fair catch signal. Yet, according to the rulebook, any waving motion constitutes a fair catch signal -- even if the signaler immediately takes off running, as DeJean did.
Here's the video of the play. You decide.
And while you're deciding, let's head over to East Lansing, Mich., home of the most can't-get-out-of-its-own-way school in the country, Michigan State. You'll remember MSU for employing a sexual predator (Larry Nassar) for literally decades, and most recently for having to fire its $10-million-a-year football coach, Mel Tucker, for masturbating on the phone with a woman who'd come to MSU to talk about sexual harassment.
Last night the Spartans greeted arch-rival Michigan wearing head-to-toe black, a bad call that apparently intimidated the No. 2 Wolverines not a bit, considering they floor-waxed Sparty 49-0. But the real bad call happened before the game, when some genius thought it would be a good idea to ask a trivia question about Hitler and put his photo up on the Jumbotron.
This in the wake of Hamas' attack on Israel. This in the wake of an accompanying outbreak of anti-semitism in America, most notably on the nation's college campuses.
Part of it has been the unfortunate by-product of pro-Palestinian rallies, which are fine and proper given Israel's long apartheid rule of the 2 million Palestinians in Gaza. Right-wing reactionaries have muddied the waters by spinning those rallies as "pro-Hamas" or "pro-terrorism", even when they've called only for peace in the region.
Problem is, some of the rallies have been rife with the sort of anti-semitic rhetoric that could have sprung whole-cloth from Germany in the 1930s. And college administrators have let it happen because they either agree with it or consider it untouchable "free speech."
Me?
Hell, I'm just astounded these bastions of supposed left-wing indoctrination -- even Harvard, for God's sake! -- could have been harboring so many Hitler Youth without anyone knowing about it.
And, yeah, OK, I'm being facetious, if only a little. I'm also willing to give the college kids a pass on some of it, on account of they're college kids and college kids are not fully formed adults with fully formed cognitive abilities.
Also, a lot of them either don't know history or have never been taught it correctly.
That said ... putting Hitler's face seven leagues tall on the Jumbotron in this environment?
Yeesh. Way to read the room, dummies.
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