Pylon-Gate

Not that it matters, the final score of the MSU game was 35-21. But what could get Sparty fans in a huge twist is the phantom TD scored by Brandon Minor on a pass from Steven Threet where Minor's foot came down on top of the pylon, and then out of bounds.

The play was first ruled to be an incomplete pass. But after a somewhat quiet review, the play was over-turned by the replay official in the booth. Apparently, according to Big Ten commish Jim Delaney, it was a mis-interpretation of the rule.

“The people in the replay booth made a mistake. It wasn’t a mistake of judgment; it was a mistake of an application of the rule. They applied the wrong rule and they applied it improperly.”

The rule is that when a player catches the ball in the air and his foot comes down on the pylon, he is out of bounds. So when you're in the air when you first posses the ball, the pylon is out. When you posses the ball in bounds, the pylon is considered the endzone.

“I expect more from them than that. You can understand a mistake of judgment on the field, and you can even understand possibly not getting the standard right because we want indisputable video evidence that a play is wrong. But to apply the wrong rule to a situation is not acceptable to me.”

There might be a ruling handed down...

“I haven’t decided yet, but we may. I doubt if we do anything publicly, but there has to be an understanding that we expect on the field and in the booth 100% knowledge of the rules, applying the right rule to the right situation. You might make a mistake in terms of judgment, but I expect our officials to know the rules and apply the right rule to the right situation. We didn’t do that, and that’s not acceptable.”

Not that it matters now, but interesting anyway.