ESPN broadcast of Colorado-Houston missed full play while at commercial

Late in the first half of Friday night’s Big 12 opener against Colorado, Houston found itself driving. Facing a third-and-13, the Cougars elected to let the clock run to the two-minute timeout before running a play. And when ESPN’s broadcast returned from its commercial break, that third-and-13 play had already been run.

When the broadcast returned from the standard two-minute timeout commercial break, the clock was at 1:55, and the officials were trying to sort out a penalty while announcers Anish Shroff and Andre Ware attempted to bring the viewing audience up to speed.

“On third-and-13, Colorado brought an all-out blitz,” Shroff said. “A flag down. It appeared Conner Weigman’s facemask was grabbed.”

Replays did indeed show that Weigman, Colorado’s quarterback, had his facemask grabbed as he was trying to throw the ball.

Making matters potentially more frustrating for viewers, the play they missed had a couple of twists to it. Not only was Colorado penalized for the facemask penalty, but Weigman was controversially called for intentional grounding.

“The grounding penalty is unfortunate,” rules expert Matt Austin said. “Because he was grabbed in the act of passing, that usually lets the quarterback off the hook for where the ball ends up.”

Interestingly, because of the offsetting fouls, the play that the broadcast missed goes down as a no-play.

Still, one has to wonder how this happens — especially in this situation.

Houston’s offense lined up for the third-and-13 well before the two-minute timeout and opted to let the clock run all the way down to it. This wasn’t a situation where an injured player got off the field faster than was expected, nor was it a quicker-than-normal review. Also, the two-minute timeout is a standard break, meaning the commercial time should be the same across all broadcasts. Still, not only did this broadcast return late, but it missed an entire play.

Humans are imperfect and machines are susceptible to the occasional glitch. Mistakes happen. This mistake, though, is harder to figure out than most.