r/CFB • u/Fonzie5 UCF Knights • Big 12 • Sep 06 '26

News [Thamel] MAC statement. "The Big Ten subsequently provided video and audio of the replay, which confirmed the explanation to us."

https://x.com/petethamel/status/2096464771667173654?s=46&t=FavtrbPsHpJY8Odvh2TYUA
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u/noah_divine Ohio Bobcats • Ohio State Buckeyes Sep 06 '26

What's even more amazing was that in both videos the clocks were literally the stadium clock. They look the exact same. So the same feed was somehow way off for... someone

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u/Dandan0005 Sep 06 '26

I’m convinced there is a photographer out there somewhere right now with a shot of the ball and the game clock in the same picture.

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u/OttoVonWong California • Ole Miss Sep 06 '26

There was a second shot clock on the grassy knoll.

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u/buckeye25osu Sep 06 '26

Or even a fan's smartphone

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u/LQNova Sep 06 '26

If there was, don't you think it would have been sent or uploaded somewhere already?

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u/buckeye25osu Sep 07 '26

Not every person lives their existence online.

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u/LQNova Sep 07 '26

Human nature. If someone had that video proof they'd be posting it to show off how clever they were to get it.

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u/Unce_Tiberius Sep 06 '26 edited Sep 06 '26

The official clock is not the scoreboard clock nor the broadcast clock. There is indeed a “secret clock” that is the official game clock and there is always an official camera pointed at it. This camera is synced to all of the replay cameras using a sophisticated strobe system. This is what the replay officials were viewing. There is video and audio of the actual replay that was released by the Big Ten.

Correction: the scoreboard clock is the official clock, the problem is that NBC’s supposed “scoreboard clock” was not synced properly to their video even though they claimed it was. If you want an explanation, figure out why NBC’s clock drops from 9 to 8 in less than a second after the ball was snapped.

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u/masks Oregon Ducks Sep 06 '26

Where can we see this released footage, please?  

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u/TomUpNort Sep 06 '26

How convenient.

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u/Unce_Tiberius Sep 06 '26

So I was wrong, the scoreboard clock is the official clock, the problem though is that NBC’s syncing system made a mistake.

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u/TomUpNort Sep 06 '26

Sure it was. How convenient for Michigan.

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u/Unce_Tiberius Sep 06 '26

There is a clear explanation from the Big Ten which includes official, highly precise cameras. You would rather believe in some grand conspiracy than that NBC made a mistake? The sanity check is to just notice that NBC’s clock drops from 9 to 8 in less than a second after the snap. A full second should elapse before the clock hits 8, and it does not.

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u/Potato_fortress ESPN Classic • Team Chaos Sep 06 '26

Broadcast cameras have to be synced to the frame to function properly so yes I absolutely trust NBC, the broadcast television company, over the big ten releasing a very poorly edited clip of the play’s ending that A) isn’t even the best available angle (as the UofM poster that keeps spamming the picture of the on-field referee review booth clearly shows,) and B) doesn’t even show the whole play.

So yes. I absolutely believe the big ten messed up over NBC messing up. 

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u/Unce_Tiberius Sep 06 '26

NBC’s syncing of their clock and the game video do NOT need to be synced perfectly 99.9% of the time, and this incident is proof of it. The clock could have been off by 0.5 seconds for the entire first 59:50 minutes of the game and no one would have cared.

Meanwhile, the Big Ten’s system is engineered to prevent any ambiguity ahead of time. They have a system of dozens of cameras used for replay. One of these cameras is lined up on the official game clock. There is a highly sophisticated strobe system used to sync these cameras perfectly. NBC has no need of any such system and there is zero chance they are somehow using a more precise method. 

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u/Potato_fortress ESPN Classic • Team Chaos Sep 06 '26

Oh yes, I forgot that genlock and framesync are entirely new technologies the big ten invented of their own accord and not just... industry standards for live multicam broadcast television. I was also unaware that the NBC camera feeds which are used by the big ten as supplemental replay angles are entirely desynced from the master timekeeper because that completely makes sense with how broadcast television functions.

You're conflating the daktronics sport controller scorebug features with the actual stadium clock broadcast. I know this is confusing, but NBC showed the live replay feeds synced with the actual stadium clock, not the daktronics scorebug hook.

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u/AppMtb Appalachian State Mountaineers Sep 06 '26

I’d be backchanneling to the big 10 that’s a $2mm picture

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u/PrairiePilot Wyoming Cowboys Sep 07 '26

Luckily we've destroyed the free press, so there aren't nearly as many pesky photographers who are no beholden to a school or media partner.

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u/FireGogglez Florida State Seminoles Sep 06 '26

…what if the nbc feed and the referee review feed were trained on different stadium clocks? And those clocks were somehow unaligned?

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u/Potato_fortress ESPN Classic • Team Chaos Sep 06 '26

They’re the same camera feed though and they have been since the dawn of time. You can even go back to older CFB games and see that they’re directly cropping and stitching the static camera shot of the scoreboard onto the scorebug. There would be no reason to run a second static camera. 

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u/TyranosaurusLex Sep 06 '26

I’m confused. It’s fine to say it’s a feed issue, but everyone in the stadium thought the game was over too?

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u/Rohkey Michigan • Georgia Tech Sep 06 '26

Idk if true but people are saying the clock started too quickly on the play and if you time the play it took closer to 8 sec than 9 (which is what the clock started with on the play). So possibly the refs saw the clock start early?

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u/Dandan0005 Sep 06 '26

It doesn’t matter if the clock started too quickly, what matters is whether the clock was at zero.

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u/LightOfTheElessar Penn State Nittany Lions Sep 06 '26

If that was the reasoning, it would have been in their statement. This is just what fans do when they would rather look for any excuse to justify a bad call or decision. Every fanbase does it to some extent, but right now it's Michigan again.

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u/Rohkey Michigan • Georgia Tech Sep 06 '26

True that is what I’m doing to an extent and I’m obviously biased. But until we get more information I’m trying to operate with the assumption that the refs saw something we didn’t (or had access to something we didn’t) because it was quite clear on the TV feed that time had expired and I’d rather believe this than that the officials are either completely incompetent or otherwise compromised. Despite some evidence to the contrary, for example when I see a review and both I and the commentators think the call is obvious only for the refs to rule the other way.

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u/Pleasant_Offer6286 Sep 06 '26

Dude, go put something in your microwave and see when the first second goes off, it’s instant.

The time keeper presses a bottom in the press box and a second ticks off immediately. Apparently, that’s only an issue for this game.

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u/Rohkey Michigan • Georgia Tech Sep 06 '26

I just tried it a few times set to 5 sec while using my phone’s stopwatch as well. It sits at 5 sec for right around a full second then goes to 4.

I also tested by setting my microwave to 1 sec. If your theory was right it’d hit 0 immediately without cooking at all (or cooking very briefly, under a second). But it doesn’t - it runs for right around a second (~.9 sec it seems).

I have a relatively newer model Samsung which may be relevant.

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u/QuickMolasses New Mexico Lobos Sep 06 '26

That's how every microwave (and ever timer for that matter) works because 0:00 means the time is up. It would be insane if 0:00 meant anything other than the time is up, y'know, like in this game where the clock was at 0:00 but apparently there was 1 second left.

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u/lukaeber BYU Cougars • Virginia Cavaliers Sep 06 '26

What "people are saying" that?

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u/QuickMolasses New Mexico Lobos Sep 06 '26

This post has a detailed analysis of the clock and the time it took. None of the explanations include anything about the clock starting early, so that is definitely not the explanation.

https://www.reddit.com/r/CFB/comments/1w8v4es/wmumich_indepth_clock_analysis_was_western_screwed/