A day of ranked-on-ranked games plus some surprise upsets leave AP voters with plenty of changes to make in the college football rankings
Page S19From§Eachthe morning edition — 18 October 2026
College officiating offices admit blown ranked-game calls only after the score can't change, twice in seven days.
Hot Mic Moment
somebody get me the political desk, because this is bigger than two conferences grading their own officials after the scoreboard's already locked. Somebody put a cop in both rooms.
Gushis side
This reporter has now watched two different conference offices stand up after the final gun and confess, hands folded, consciences clear, that their own officials cost a ranked team the game — the third such confession in as many weeks, by this desk's count.
The fresher of the two came out of the Big 12 office, which ruled Notre Dame should have been handed one more play after officials blew the game dead with just :01 still showing on the clock against BYU.
That ruling landed one week to the day after the Big Ten owned up to its own crew blowing a call in Oregon's tying upset win over UCLA, a confession this reporter is reliably informed arrived before the Ducks had even finished celebrating the victory.
Both wins remain exactly where the box score put them, officiating error and all, while the AP's voters are already sliding BYU up toward the top of next week's polls.
Trudyher side
Third in three weeks, sugar? Count again. The Big Ten admitted it October 11, the Big 12 admitted it October 18 — that's two conferences, two Sundays, exactly seven days apart, both receipts right here on the wire.
That one second is the whole ballgame — CBS Sports has it in writing, and it's the difference between a loss on the books and a game that was never actually over.
Reliably misinformed. Oregon lost that game — the blown call was on the Ducks' own two-point try to tie it with 2:16 left, and UCLA's the one still sitting in the win column, per the Post's October 11 report.
Sliding is right — CBS Sports has BYU in the No. 1 conversation off a game their own conference office admits they shouldn't have finished the way they did.
Mic's hot again, Gus — rein it in. But he's not wrong on the paper trail: that correction really did halve the itemized receipts while the $55 billion figure stood, February 19, 2025, same as the two wins staying on the books today. Go lie down.
“They tell you the system grades itself fair — then prove it by only grading the blown call once the trophy's already engraved. Oregon's still 0-1 on that missed two-pointer, Notre Dame's still a loss, and BYU's riding the whole mess toward a No. 1 ranking. The apology's free; the win stays bought.”
“Look, you can't go back and replay a football game every time a whistle gets blown wrong — that's chaos, that's the integrity of the sport, that's finality, that's... did the conference itself say the call cost them the game? I must've missed that part. The process worked exactly as designed, mostly.”
The receipts
Whoops. The Big Ten issued a mea culpa Sunday for an officiating error that cost Oregon yardage on a pivotal play the previous day against UCLA – not that it’s going to do the Ducks any good now. When Oregon went for what would have been a tying 2-point conversion with 2:16 left during its...
The clock still had :01 remaining when officials erroneously ruled the Cougars-Irish game was over
This page is a back-issue: the story as it ran, receipts as they were. The current edition is at the front. The byline is a pen name for a column drafted by a machine and checked by the editor: how this is made.