BYU vs ASU: Tempers Flare, Coach Gets Furious, Kalani Sitake & Kenny Dillingham's Tensions Grow After Officiating Blunder

A replay booth’s forgotten rule cost Arizona State a game it should have won. What came after was a chaotic post-game drama at midfield. BYU might have secured the victory, but the real story is how a botched second-down call turned a tight matchup into pure madness.

The madness started early on a crucial second-down play at the ASU 1-yard line. BYU quarterback Bear Bachmeier fumbled the snap, and the referees originally blew the play dead, saying his forward progress had stopped. But then, the Big 12 replay booth stepped in and went into overdrive.

After looking at the replay once, they changed the ball placement. Then they looked at it again and decided BYU running back Sione Moa had recovered the ball and scored a touchdown. It looked like a great moment for BYU, but there was just one huge problem: the booth forgot the actual rules.

Even during the live broadcast, former referee and rules expert Mike Pereira pointed out that the booth got it completely wrong. According to NCAA rules, if a player fumbles and a teammate recovers it on fourth down, the ball is dead at the exact spot of the recovery, and it cannot be advanced. Moa actually scooped up the ball back at the 2-yard line, meaning the touchdown should never have counted.

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Hours after the game ended, the Big 12 issued an official apology, admitting to this blunder. But an apology doesn’t change the scoreboard. Since BYU won by exactly seven points, that illegal touchdown literally decided the game.

Knowing they had been robbed of a fair shot, Arizona State players and coaches were understandably furious as the clock ticked down. The moment the final whistle blew, all that built-up frustration exploded right in the middle of the field.

Right in the middle of the madness were the two head coaches, Kenny Dillingham and Kalani Sitake. Dillingham, who is known for wearing his heart on his sleeve, was visibly out of his mind with anger over how the referees treated his team.

The Sun Devils HC marched right up to Sitake at midfield, and the two spent a long, incredibly intense couple of minutes talking when BYU’s defensive coordinator, Kelly Poppinga, was seen exchanging heated words with Dillingham before they were separated.

While Dillingham’s frustration was evident, the exchange remained verbal, with no physical confrontation between the two coaches. The anger didn’t stay on the field, either.

Fans were so fed up with the terrible refereeing that a video clip from Center Street Media quickly went viral online. The clip showed a blind person moving BYU’s student section, with the caption joking, “How the refs are moving recently.”

For Arizona State, this loss is an incredibly bitter pill to swallow because it feels like a repeat of their heartbreaking 2024 matchup against BYU. To play your heart out for four quarters, only to lose because the official replay booth literally forgot how the rulebook works is crazy work!

Coach Dillingham and his players have every right to feel cheated out of a fair game! The Big 12 conference has a massive mess on its hands.

It is one thing for a referee to miss a quick holding call in real time, but it is another thing entirely for a replay booth to look at a monitor multiple times and still break an official rule.

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