ARLINGTON, Texas – Someone, quick: Check the Guinness Book of World Records for the largest gathering of confused persons, because it was likely broken Saturday at the conclusion of the Cowboy Classic’s first half.
In a throwback to last season, the Tigers failed to finish for seven points in the red zone when senior quarterback Zach Mettenberger’s pass to senior running back Alfred Blue fell short on third down with five seconds left.
At the end of the play, junior offensive lineman La’el Collins’ helmet fell off. Referee John O’Neill switched his mic on to let the crowd know that because there was under 90 seconds to go, a 10 second runoff was in order. And that meant the half was over.
Reporters in the press box laughed while the LSU fans booed, TCU made a beeline for the locker room underneath their raucous Horned Frog faithful and the Tigers meandered toward theirs, dumbfounded.
Oh, and O’Neill must have forgot that the clock stops on an incomplete pass. So he came back on to notify the crowd and ask the scoreboard operators to put five seconds back on the clock.
And now the TCU fans booed while their counterparts celebrated and the press laughed even harder. TCU walked dejectedly back on to the field, coach Gary Patterson fumed at O’Neill.
“Well, No. 1, they told us it was a 20-second runoff,” he said after his team’s eventual 27-37 loss. “But because it was a down play, then you don’t get a 20-second runoff. So I was told that it was a 20-second runoff. So the team ran off the field. Then we called them back, everything got called back, and we had to go kick a field goal. So that’s the way it is.”
TCU running back B.J. Catalon had just got his gloves off and was relaxing in the locker room after running back the longest kickoff in the stadium’s history (100 yards) when the coaches told the players they had to go back to the sideline, where they’d watch LSU freshman kicker Colby Delahoussaye double his team’s lead.
“It shocked us all,” Catalon said. “… I was pretty confused as to what was going on and none of us really liked it. Of course, they got the extra three points, so…”
Obvious syntax error aside, Miles must have been confused when he told an ESPN sideline reporter after the incident that the events were “untypically of us.” He definitely was when he spoke to the media after the game.
“I said ‘Wait a minute, wait a minute, somebody took his helmet off,’” Miles said, as if it made a difference. “And then he reviewed that with the gentleman who made the call and said that that was true. And then so we got those five seconds to kick the field goal. To the best of my recollection.”
The madness that follows Miles is well documented, but so are his team’s red zone woes. Even injured freshman Avery Johnson knows it, tweeting “We need to score in the Red Zone,” after one failure.
The Tigers scored touchdowns on three of six trips to the red zone, nearly matching their 2012 season percentage of 51 percent.
“We have to be better there,” Miles said. “We have to be able to run the football when we get down in there where we’re in striking distance, at times.”
But in all this, confusion didn’t reach its high point until everyone realized Mettenberger had impressed.