Western Michigan president Russ Kavalhuna watched his Broncos suffer one of the most crushing and controversial losses in college football history and wasn’t sure what would come next.
WMU coach Lance Taylor’s message to the team in the aftermath of Michigan’s controversial 13-12 victory Saturday night set the course for Kavalhuna.
“You made everybody proud,” Kavalhuna recounted Taylor saying after the Broncos lost on a second-chance Hail Mary that came after video review extended the game.
“You’ve got to hold your head high when you walk out of this place, and we’ve got every single opportunity to still achieve everything that we need to do. And everybody knows we won that game, and we’re going to walk out of this locker room with our heads held high, and we are going to focus, and we’re going to still achieve our goals.”
Western Michigan wants the Michigan Hail Mary overturned
Chris Vannini
On Tuesday, Mid-American Conference leadership sent letters to the NCAA’s Football Oversight Committee and College Football Playoff executive director Rich Clark, asking both to take the unusual step of having all records, rankings and postseason considerations reflect a Western Michigan victory.
“After further study and investigation, it is now evident that replay protocol was not properly followed in determining whether time remained on the game clock at the conclusion of the Western Michigan vs. Michigan football game,” MAC commissioner Jon Steinbrecher said.
Replay officials used an angle of the play that did not have a game clock embedded in the video and restored one second to give Michigan another play. The Wolverines took advantage and completed a game-winning 47-yard TD pass with that extra play — a result the NCAA indicated is likely to remain unchanged.
“NCAA football playing rules do not have a protocol for overturning the outcome of a game,” the NCAA said in a statement. “The Division I Football Bowl Subdivision Oversight Committee also does not have the authority to overturn the outcome of a game.”
Still, Kavalhuna believes the MAC’s actions are worthwhile and commended Steinbrecher for “having the courage to stand up.”
“Everything’s impossible until somebody tries it,” Kavalhuna told The Athletic on Wednesday.
A victory over Michigan, a Big Ten blue blood that began the season ranked No. 16 in the AP Top 25, would be a boon for Western Michigan if it goes on to have a big season. It’s the type of upset against a Power 4 team that could boost a Group of 6 team like Western Michigan into the College Football Playoff.
The highest-ranked team by the selection committee from outside the P4 is guaranteed a spot in the 12-team CFP. A Playoff appearance could be worth millions in revenue and exposure for the school and the MAC.
“I believe this football team has a chance to be great,” said Kavalhuna, a WMU alum who was born in Kalamazoo, Mich. “And we are in a place of college football today where record is not everything. Reputation. I mean, it’s literally a voting process to get to the most elite tournament. Now we do have a proxy for a lot of that, and that’s your record. But we also get into this multifaceted matrix of the strength of schedule, how we rank losses and wins for teams. So the subjective analysis of this matters, and you read what the MAC wrote, and you do have to start thinking, ‘Geez, I think this might make some sense.’”
Western Michigan won the MAC last season, Taylor’s third as head coach in Kalamazoo.
Despite the stakes, Kavalhuna and Taylor have struck a magnanimous tone since Sunday, when they held a news conference to address the end of the game. While expressing disappointment and frustration with the outcome, they have not accused anyone of foul play.
He said he has received emails from people with seemingly no connection to WMU “attacking Lance Taylor’s character and his manhood.”
He said one person who is associated with the university told him, “You didn’t take the high road; you took the easy road.”
“It hasn’t made me even moderately rethink what we’re doing,” Kavalhuna said.
Kavalhuna said Taylor did not want his players to view themselves as victims because that doesn’t build resilience in young people.
“We’re actually watching a group of young men deal with this, and knowing that it’s not always ‘I win’ or ‘the other team cheated,’” Kavalhuna said. “It can be somewhere in the middle, and then if you don’t go into that false narrative, then you get to do what we all really should want to do, and that is to grow through adversity. Because if you buy into this, ‘We didn’t get our way, so everyone’s cheating,’ and ‘We didn’t get our way, so the other teams are bad, or there’s some villain out there,’ then you literally cheat yourself out of the opportunity to grow.”