Illinois tops Penn State in longest (and maybe worst) game in college football history | College Football Enquirer
Yahoo Sports’ Dan Wetzel and Pete Thamel, and Sports Illustrated’s Pat Forde discuss the 9-overtime epic between Illinois and Penn State, and debate if Penn State’s failure could affect James Franklin’s future.
Video transcript
[BAT HITS BALL, CROWD CHEERS]
DAN WETZEL: All right, I want to read you what I think will go down into the College Football Hall of Fame, a series of plays that should get right to it. You know when they ship a baseball or something right to Cooperstown? This should go in, the official box score.
Here we have T. Warren, pass attempt failed, A. Sitkowski, pass attempt failed. A. Sitkowski, pass attempt fail. S. Clifford, pass attempt failed. N. Cain, rush attempt failed. B. Peters, pass attempt failed. Hold on, I need some water to get through the rest of it.
PAT FORDE: So much failure.
DAN WETZEL: B. Peters, pass attempt failed. S. Clifford, pass attempt failed. This looks like my sophomore year report card. N. Cain, rush attempt failed. J. McRae, rushed attempt failed. Finally, I. Williams, rush attempt successful. Then N. Cain, rush attempt successful. Then S. Clifford, pass attempt failed. And C. Washington, pass attempt successful.
Illinois Illini 20, Penn State 18. Legendary nine-overtime game. What in the God's hell was going on?
[LAUGHTER]
PAT FORDE: It was horrendous. I mean--
[LAUGHTER]
--it was the worst exciting game of all time. I mean, this was terrible. This was so bad. I mean, I think it was 13-13 at the end of regulation, or maybe it was 10-10.
PETE THAMEL: 10.
PAT FORDE: 10-10 at the end of regulation. So you got that to start with. And then, yeah--
DAN WETZEL: But when they traded field goals.
PAT FORDE: Yeah. Yeah, you go to the third overtime now. And this was the solution. And I talked to somebody about this this morning. I was like, how did we end up with this? And the short answer and the well-intentioned answer is coaches were worried about too many plays and guys getting injured. And you end up with that Texas A&M-LSU, seven-overtime, where you're just playing guys into the ground basically.
So the solution-- the old solution was, after the second overtime, everybody's got to go for 2, but you keep playing in a normal fashion. Now we have the football equivalent of penalty kicks, where you just go for a 2-point conversion every time in the third overtime. I think it's an awful rule. I think it's awful.
Again, well-intentioned, but very bad execution. Football is a four-down sequence. The entire sport is built around that foundation. Every possession is a four-down sequence. You have to plan how you're going to handle it. You have to play it on fourth down if you don't score, or you have to figure out a special teams play.
You just throw all that out now. And all of a sudden, you play one play. Then the other team plays one play. And then in the case of this game, where they wanted to go to opposite ends of the field, you walk after two plays to the other end. And then after two more bad plays, you walk to this end. And then after two more bad plays, you go back and forth across the stadium every two plays. It was absurd.
PETE THAMEL: So I was listening on the radio. And if you're ever driving on Saturdays, which we are sometimes, the ESPNU Radio on Sirius, it's like channel 84, does a radio version of the Red Zone.
PAT FORDE: Yeah.
PETE THAMEL: And it's quite good because you kind of-- we're going to Tallahassee. They're trying a last-minute field goal. We're going here. We're going there. And here's something I found interesting from a game that nobody has wanted to erase from their memory banks more.
So I was right about takeaways. And Brandon Peters ends up coming in for Sitkowski. And it sounds like Sitkowski broke his hand. There was an air cast or whatever.
2-point conversion passes, I believe, don't count as official statistics. Does that sound right?
PAT FORDE: Yes, yeah.
PETE THAMEL: So Brandon Peters, like, I'm looking in the stats to double check. And it's not listed. And then the receiver who caught it, I guess, threw a couple of balls or ran a couple, whatever. So he's like--
And I'm confused because I'm like, wait a minute. And then I'm reading the AP story. And it's like, Brandon Peters came off the bench to throw it. And I'm like-- so it is fitting that the final play of that disaster actually does-- it's from a player who gets no statistical credit for contributing to the game.
DAN WETZEL: All right. So a couple of things. One, the failure of Penn State's-- Penn State's failed 2-point conversion offense could literally cost James Franklin-- talk about career road bumps you didn't see coming.
PAT FORDE: Yeah.
DAN WETZEL: He's off these days. Drop down on the LSU and USC list because they couldn't convert a damn 2-point conversion.
PETE THAMEL: Yeah.
DAN WETZEL: Because their tight end reverse pass to the quarterback, which was wide open, was, shockingly, a terrible pass by a tight end and a poor catch by a quarterback. Imagining. Damn. But regardless, you should not be in the ninth overtime against Illinois, OK? So this has not been a good stretch for Penn State.
