Shawn Crable - Larry Foote

I know this is a little late, but I forgot to give my MAM (Monday Afternoon Moron) nomination after the Michigan-Ohio State game.

Was that Larry Foote who cracked Troy Smith as he was out of bounds after throwing up that 3rd and long prayer that fell incomplete late in the 4th quarter? It would have been 4th and 15 forcing OSU to punt and give Michigan the ball with at least 4 minutes and behind 4 points. Instead, Shawn Crable decided to go Larry Foote on Jeff Smoker and gave OSU an automatic first down from the personal foul penalty.

In case you forgot the 2001 classic, Larry Foote was the moron who hit Jeff Smoker with a personal foul enabling MSU to continue the drive late in the 4th quarter and...you know the rest of the story. Smoker finds TJ Duckett in the endzone on the controversial play, "The Longest...Second."

Side note: Two months ago I watched the 2001 MSU-UM football game on ESPN Classic. As I watched those final seconds before Jeff Smoker finally spiked that ball with "1 second" left, it actually didn't seem like it took any longer. If I had not watched the game live from Adam's apartment or if I wasn't a Michigan fan or even if I'd never even seen the game, I would never have thought anything was wrong with that "longer" second. Maybe it's because I've finally gotten over that game after 5 years (it helps take the sting away that MSU hasn't beat UM since then...hmmm, maybe there was an extra long second and the MSU Gods said to the UM Gods, "Okay, please give us 1 more play." And then the UM Gods said, "Fine, but if you win on this play, you won't win another game against UM for a very, very long time. Deal?" And I think MSU took that deal and said "Screw the underclassmen.").

Back to Shawn Crable and the "you can always predict a stupid penalty by Michigan in a huge football game." That's one thing that's always bothered me about Lloyd Carr. Somebody always does something stupid late in the game. Carr has never gotten his teams under control when it comes to plays like that. It never fails, I wasn't shocked at all, and it was a great call by the officials and UM deserved it.

Back to another Instant Classic between UM and MSU. I was watching the 1990 game, you know, the one where Desmond Howard was held then tripped in the enzone and then dropped the ball when he landed on the ground? That was the first time I'd really seen that play very good. What terrible officiating. But, I'm not writing to rip on the non-call. My point here is: What in the heck was Michigan going for the 2-pt conversion for? All these years that I've seen that score or the highlights, I had no idea that Michigan just scored a TD and chose to go for 2 instead of the smart thing to do, kick the extra point. Now that I know the True Hollywood Story on that 1990 game, I could care less if MSU cut off Desmond's legs and the officials still blew the call. I'm ticked that they were too arrogant to kick a lousy extra point. UM deserved to lose. One more thing. I thought that drop in the endzone was the final play of the game. Since I didn't know a TD was just scored and it was a play that didn't require time to be run off the clock, I didn't know that there was an on-side kick that Michigan recovered, giving them another chance to win the game. Bizarre.