The college football world got a dose of some late-night weird on November 16.
In the wee hours of the early morning (or late night, depending on where you’re located) No. 6 BYU was getting all it could handle from a three-win Kansas team. The Cougars were 9-0 entering the game and looked like a shoo-in for the Big 12 title game and possibly the College Football Playoff.
But as the third quarter became the fourth, things got tight in Provo, Utah. Entering the fourth quarter, BYU sat atop a 13-10 lead and looked like it might escape with a narrow victory. Then things went haywire for the Cougars.
Less than a minute and a half into the fourth quarter, BYU forced a third-down stop and Kansas lined up to go for it on fourth down. Kansas quarterback Jalon Daniels took the snap and pooch-punted the ball high into the crisp, nighttime air.
As the ball fluttered back down to earth, it struck a BYU player’s helmet. A scramble ensued and a Kansas player later recovered the ball. One play later, Jayhawks’ running back Devin Neal plunged into the end zone from three yards out to give Kansas a 17-13 lead, on what would later become the game-winning score.
BYU failed to score through the rest of the fourth quarter and suffered its first loss of the 2024 season.
The very next week, BYU failed to bounce back and lost to eventual Big 12 champions Arizona State 28-23. In just two short weeks, BYU went from undefeated to virtually out of its conference title race with a pair of losses by a combined nine points. It was an especially cruel ending to an otherwise exceptional year for the Cougars.
What if Kansas never pooch-punted a ball off a BYU helmet?
It’s difficult to say for certain, but had that Jalon Daniels’ pooch punt not ricocheted off a BYU player’s helmet, I feel fairly confident that BYU would've beaten Kansas and thus earned a chance to play for the Big 12 title.
Despite its vaunted rushing attack, the Jayhawks mustered just 75 yards the entire night against that BYU defense. Kansas needed a fluke play to get that final score and to win the game.
Without that fluke play, Kansas likely loses and an undefeated BYU team would’ve squared off with Arizona State the following week.
How does that pooch-punt impact BYU in 2024 and beyond?
Without that fluke play, BYU would’ve likely earned the chance to play for a Big 12 title game and very reasonably could’ve won that game to advance to the College Football Playoff. A CFP berth would’ve had a monumental impact on the BYU football program moving forward.
I don’t necessarily think that BYU was better than Arizona State or that it was much better than the other teams at the top of the Big 12 in November, but what I will argue is that it had just as good of a shot as any of them to make the title game and earn a College Football Playoff berth.
It took a strange turn of events for that not to happen. That’s college football, baby.