Big 12 officials have done it again.
BYU and Arizona State battled on Saturday, with the Cougars taking an early 7-0 lead in a confusing way.
BYU had the ball on 2nd and goal in the first quarter when quarterback Bear Bachmeier fumbled on a sneak attempt. Running back Sione Moa eventually picked it up and rolled into the end zone. However, officials initially ruled that Bachmeier’s forward progress had stopped, ending the play. Then officials reviewed the play again, this time with the Big 12’s replay review center chiming in, and overturned the call, crediting BYU with a touchdown.
Fox’s Connor Onion and Robert Griffin III were on the call, along with rules analyst Mike Pereira, and none of them could explain why they overturned it.
Fox’s Connor Onion, Robert Griffin III, and Mike Pereira tried to make sense of how this BYU-ASU call got overturned.
“This is three weeks in a row where we’ve had Big 12 officials just making up rules as they go.”
— Awful Announcing (@awfulannouncing.bsky.social) October 31, 2026 at 4:13 PM
“So Mike Pereira, we were talking, could he or could he not advance that fumble?” asked Onion. “What would have changed the official’s mind on if he could?”
“This is not the type of situation that you have when the runner steps out of bounds where you can give him continuing action,” said Pereira. “This was a player that recovered the ball and got up in the field of play. The ruling on the field was the runner was down initially, and if that’s the case, you’ve ruled it dead. You can give a recovery, but you can’t give an advance unless we’ve come up with a new rule here, which I’m not too sure that you can really do.”
“And [ASU coach] Kenny Dillingham is saying the whistle blew,” added Onion. “So if there was a whistle that blew, then the play is dead at that point.”
“And he’s right. He’s right,” replied Pereira. “This is getting kind of frustrating, you know, week to week. You know, we shouldn’t have these situations that we come up, and then we have further explanation as the week wears on. But the fact is, Kenny’s right. Kenny is right. They killed the play. You can forget about when the whistle happened. They killed the play in the field of play, and the ball was out. Give the recovery but not the advance.”
They then replayed the critical 2nd-down play, and Onion noted that no whistle blew after forward progress was stunted.
“There is no whistle there, but when he came on the intercom afterward, he said that they had stopped the play for forward progress,” added Griffin. “So Mikey P is 100% correct. Kenny Dillingham is justified in being frustrated about this situation because now this is three weeks in a row where we’ve had Big 12 officials just making up rules as they go.”
Two weeks ago, Big 12 officials seemingly missed a pass interference call and failed to account for an extra second at the end of the BYU-Notre Dame game, leading to the Cougars’ win. Afterward, Pereira said the ending was “embarrassing for all officiating.”
Last week, in UCF’s 39–31 double-overtime upset over BYU, Big 12 officials misapplied the 10-second runoff rule at the end of regulation, enforcing a runoff after a helmet came off on a blocked field goal that was a legal kick down. Rules analysts such as Terry McAulay explained that the runoff shouldn’t have been applied. Later, officials also called a very disputed roughing-the-kicker penalty against the Cougars.
Unfortunately for Pereira and the rest of us, this is going to be yet another week where “we have further explanation as the week wears on,” because it remains very unclear how Big 12 officials made this call.