Miami (Ohio) Put Extra Goalposts on Its Video Board and Got Flagged. Then It Scored 34 Straight.
Six seconds remained in the first half Tuesday night in Oxford. Ohio led Miami 17-7 and lined up for a 34-yard field goal. Miami’s video board, sitting in kicker Brack Peacock’s line of sight, lit up with depictions of goalposts. Peacock’s kick hit an upright and missed.
Then the flag came out.
“On the previous play, there were depictions of the field goal uprights on the scoreboard,” the referee announced. “That is a foul for unsportsmanlike conduct against Miami. Half the distance to the goal, automatic first down.”
Ohio got first-and-goal at the 8 with the half expiring. The Bobcats did not re-kick. Holder Magnus Haines threw a fake field goal to Evan Herrmann, Miami’s Blane Myrick broke it up, and the half ended with Ohio up 10.
Miami won the Battle of the Bricks 34-17.
Thirty-Four Unanswered Points
Miami trailed 17-0 before scoring 34 in a row. Starting quarterback Caleb Heavner was hurt in the second quarter and true freshman Drew Bellisari finished the game, going 8-of-15 for 99 yards. D’Shawntae Jones ran for two touchdowns. Two fourth-quarter field goals tied it and then put Miami ahead 20-17, and the RedHawks scored twice in roughly 30 seconds late, the second on a pick-six.
“I’ve been proud of a lot of wins in my life, but I haven’t been more proud of a group,” coach Chuck Martin said.
On the penalty, Martin was blunter: “We get the scoreboard penalty. I didn’t even know there was such a thing.”
Miami is 6-4 and 4-2 in the MAC, with its sixth win in hand, the usual threshold for bowl eligibility, and its conference title hopes still alive. Ohio fell to 7-3 and 5-1, taking its first league loss and losing for the first time in six games. First-year coach John Hauser put the fake on himself: “The fake at the end of the half, that one’s on me. I wanted to be aggressive and go up three scores instead of two.”
Nobody Agrees Which Rule It Was
WLWT and WHIO cited NCAA Rule 1-1-6, adopted before the 2021 season, which bars audio, video and lighting operators from creating noise or distraction that keeps a team from hearing its signals or obstructs play. ESPN attributed Rule 9-2-1 to officials. FootballScoop cited 1-1-6 plus 1-4-2-d and said openly that it had not verified either. No official NCAA or MAC document has settled it.
What has not happened is just as notable. The MAC has issued no statement, announced no review and handed down no discipline. Neither school has commented on the display itself. Characterizing it as an attempt to confuse the kicker is reporters’ language, not anything officials or Miami have said, and Martin’s only on-record remark suggests he did not know the foul existed.
This Has a Track Record
Oklahoma State did a version of this in 2020, putting yellow bars on its video board behind the uprights during a Cameron Dicker attempt in a 41-34 overtime win over Texas on Oct. 31. Then-Texas coach Tom Herman said Big 12 officials told him the tactic was “not permissible.” No flag was thrown in that game. The rule covering video board operators arrived ahead of the 2021 season.
The NFL dealt with its own version in September, sending all 32 teams a memo restricting what can appear on video boards during field goals and extra points after screenshots surfaced showing Patriots boards displaying uprights offset from the real ones. That tactic was legal until somebody noticed.
So Miami got flagged for something plenty of programs have tried, lost 13 yards of field position for it, and then won by 17. Ohio lost a 17-point lead and a conference title path on a night it will remember for the scoreboard.
A longtime sports reporter, Carlos Garcia has written about some of the biggest and most notable athletic events of the last 5 years. He has been credentialed to cover MLS, NBA and MLB games all over the United States. His work has been published on Fox Sports, Bleacher Report, AOL and the Washington Post.
