The officiating crew in Saturday’s game between the Oregon Ducks and Washington State Cougars made quite the mess of the aftermath of an intentional grounding penalty.
The Cougars were called for intentional grounding on a first down play early in the second quarter, which should have come with a loss of down. Somehow, the officiating crew took away an extra down from Washington State, and the drive went directly to third down.
The play that resulted in intentional grounding was quite clearly first down.
Nobody seemed to question it when Washington State came out after that on 3rd and 17. They ran a draw, then punted, only for the officiating crew to realize their error and go back to third down to try to make it right.
In short, Washington State punted twice, but only one of them counted because they were robbed of a down on the actual drive by the officials. They got it right in the end — sort of — but made a real mess of it from start to finish.
Amazingly, this has happened before, though in another recent instance the error was never corrected. Perhaps the Cougars should consider themselves fortunate that someone was clued into the issue here.
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