Column: How a missed call in Illinois’ loss to Michigan may have led to the most lopsided national title game ever

It’s clear TCU was not remotely in the same area code as Georgia in the Horned Frogs’ 65-7 loss Monday in the College Football Playoff national championship game at SoFi Stadium.

The matchup between the SEC champion and Big 12 runner-up turned out to be even grislier than most experts predicted.

Cinderella stories in sports are cool. But when the biggest game of the year is decided by the middle of the first quarter, you spend the rest of the night thinking about what might have been with a different matchup.

You can blame the most lopsided national championship game in history on many things, Georgia’s utter dominance being the most likely factor. But if you’re looking for answers, an uncalled penalty on an illegal pick play by Michigan at the tail end of its Nov. 19 game against Illinois is as good as any other theory.

Bear with me. It’s a bit complicated and perhaps more than a little crazy. And if you’re a Michigan Man, you can stop reading now.

Flash back to that cold Saturday afternoon at the Big House in Ann Arbor, Mich. Unranked Illinois led No. 3 Michigan 17-16 late in the fourth quarter and was on the verge of one of the biggest upsets of the season.

The Wolverines were moving the ball on their final drive but faced fourth-and-3 at the Illini 45-yard line with about one minute remaining and the clock ticking.

“This is the season in so many ways for these two,” ESPN announcer Sean McDonough said as the ball was snapped.

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Michigan quarterback J.J. McCarthy hit running back Isaiah Gash for an 8-yard gain, keeping the drive — and the Wolverines’ unbeaten season — alive. But officials missed a potential offensive pass interference infraction by Michigan tight end Colston Loveland, who blocked an Illinois defender coming off the line, leaving Gash wide open.

After the first down, the Illini were called for pass interference on the next play, a 15-yard gain for Michigan. The Wolverines wound up winning 19-17 on Jake Moody’s game-ending, 35-yard field goal and remained No. 3 in the CFP rankings behind No. 1 Georgia and No. 2 Ohio State.

When a video of the alleged pick play was posted soon afterward on Twitter, Illinois coach Bret Bielema retweeted it and sarcastically wrote: “To all #ILL players, coaches and especially for our fans…. We will work all week in practice to defend this play especially on 4th down.”

While Bielema didn’t specifically blame the officials after the game, he said during the televised halftime interview that the Illini had to beat “110,000 (fans) and a few others,” an obvious shot at the officiating. Afterward he said he was ”extremely pissed off” and “very upset” at the way the game played out.

“Think our kids did a lot to win the football game and to continually have things go against us, very frustrating,” he said.

We can’t turn back time and say the Illini would’ve stopped Michigan and won the game had a penalty had been called, but the odds definitely would’ve been against the Wolverines.

Instead they remained unbeaten, and after beating Ohio State in “The Game,” they rose to No. 2 in the CFP rankings and stayed there after finishing off Purdue in the Big Ten championship game.

Ohio State dropped to No. 5 after its loss to Michigan but made the playoff as the No. 4 seed when USC lost in the Pac-12 title game, edging out Alabama for the final spot.

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Would a one-loss Michigan team still have made the playoff? No doubt. But they would’ve dropped behind TCU in the rankings after a loss at home to the unranked Illini.

And losing to a one-loss Michigan team, instead of an unbeaten one, might have put Ohio State behind Alabama heading into the final CFP ranking. After TCU lost to Kansas State in the Big 12 title game, the final four could’ve been Georgia, Michigan, Alabama and TCU in that order.

Michigan still would have been Big Ten champion. Alabama, which suffered last-minute road losses to ranked Tennessee and LSU, was the second-best team in the nation’s best conference and deserving of the No. 3 seed. TCU played a weaker schedule than both and lost in its title game, so No. 4 would’ve been appropriate.

Suppose then that Georgia trounced TCU in a semifinal instead of the title game, while Michigan coach Jim Harbaugh “Harbaughed” his way to a loss to Alabama in the other semi. We would’ve had another all-SEC title game between the Bulldogs and Crimson Tide.

Maybe America is tired of seeing SEC teams in the playoff. No one wants to see the same teams over and over. But the SEC is superior to the Big Ten, which almost never fails to disappoint us, and Georgia-Alabama would’ve given us a much more watchable title game than what we witnessed Monday night.

The expanded 12-team playoff should alleviate the problem of having an overmatched team such as TCU in the championship game after beating an overconfident Michigan team. But that will have to wait another year, with the four-team system still in place for 2023.

Until then, one bad call can change the outcome of one game, which can change the course of a team’s season, which can alter the CFP rankings that determine the playoffs.

It’s a shame to have such a boring game end an otherwise interesting college football season. Coach Kirby Smart and the Bulldogs richly deserved their second straight title.

But it would’ve been nice to see someone put up a fight against them.