This might be the worst play in college sports since Chris Webber’s infamous timeout.
Just before crossing the goal line on what would have been a 79-yard touchdown to put Utah up 14-0 on Oregon, receiver Kaelin Clay prematurely dropped the football. Adding insult to injury, Oregon’s Joe Walker recovered the ensuing fumble and took it the length of the field for a touchdown.
The whole thing was so bizarre that the commentators didn’t even realize what had happened until Walker was already in the endzone.
While still early, the blunder, which caused an immediate 14 point-swing, likely cost Utah the game. The team’s starting quarterback, Kendal Thompson, left the game in the first quarter with an apparent knee injury. And you rarely can’t recover from tidal shift in momentum.
It’s one thing for this type of play to occur at the high school level—just last week, in fact, some poor quarterback cost his team the game on a similar play—but there’s absolutely no excuse for such an egregious oversight at the collegiate level.
This is the Utah wide receiver Kaelin Clay’s reaction to the call being upheld. pic.twitter.com/sr1QFDWsI8
— Woody Wommack (@RivalsWoody) November 9, 2014
We feel your pain.
Correction: An earlier version of this article incorrectly identified the starting quarterback for Utah. It was Kendal Thompson. We regret the error.
Screengrab via YouTube