I noticed that as well. It shouldn't be that difficult to get the spot correct but I suppose at that point everyone (the refs) just wants to go home. 

Screw this - Brian is WRONG!!!  I award the Passing Rutger.

Tie goes to the runner, right?

Yeah, I thought that Fleck managed that very well. The broadcast teams should have a Madden kid in the studio they can bring on to assess these situations as they arise in games.

Agree, and Blackledge briefly touched on that Michigan also got the ball to start the second half.  Giving Michigan the ball with a chance to score points at the end of the half and start of second could have been the hammer blow.

It was still at least a game at halftime.

I think once Minnesota got into 4th and 2 from our 40, they handled clock management well.  But the rest of the drive, in which they were actually running the ball for some pretty consistent 5-8 yard chunks, they showed no urgency whatsoever.  It cost them the chance to try to continue to drive into the end zone and forced them instead to try a low-probability prayer, which just happened to be Kaliakmanis' only great pass of the night.

I was at the game, and pretty much the whole stadium hated that clock management. I think both the Michigan and Minnesota fans were booing at that point. The game was 24-3 at that point, and it's decision time. You either play to not lose too badly, or you play to win. If you go into halftime with 24-10 deficit and some momentum, that's only a 2-score game and feels pretty different than 24-6 or 24-3. On other other hand, does 31- or 27-3 feel all that different in terms of 2nd-half chances than 24-3? No, I don't think it does. By attempting to wind down the clock, Fleck was telling his team that he'd already given up. Now, that message was rather undercut by the perfect endzone bomb just before the half, but that was basically luck rather than a result of some mastermind game management.

Was at the game and when they snapped the ball on the end of half TD I immediately groaned "ahhhhhh, they got em!". My son asked what I was talking about and how I knew. 

Fleck knew the situation for his team was bad. He wanted anything to help his team at that point and running traditional stuff was not working. He played the whole thing as if he was running out the clock to kick a field goal. Michigan wasn't ready for the downfield attempt. Sainristil misses the receiver going deep because he was expecting an in or out route to pick up a couple yards and either get out of bounds or stop the clock. Sabb is very late getting over the top to help (in fact he never gets there) because he is expecting something in the middle of the field. The D-Line and LB's were not crushing the pocket like they had the whole first half because they were dropping to cover the middle and prevent a long QB run. That was the only play the MN QB had enough time to throw deep all game. 

Well played by Fleck. 

This grumpy old man started yelling where had that had been all half.  I loudly explained to my son why that play was available at that point, but not any other time in the game. The old man kept complaining the whole second half anyway. 

I’ll give you 90-10 Edwards. He also started to fall down for no reason. 

Yeah, what happen to Davis Warren?

Ya so this means there are g5 teams who run it better on ypc basis against p5 opponents. 

And against those potentially 65 teams,  OSU is 81st, since all the teams in the country can play against G5 teams

Yes, you want to secure the win, but you also want to secure the blow-out win. It makes everyone feel better and helps with the polls, etc.

If you pulled the starters, say, at the half, that opens a window for the opposition. Most Big Ten teams are going to have the starters to compete with our backups, and if the difference is only a few scores at that point, there's a very real chance for a comeback. That means our backups are getting reps against their starters, which isn't great for self-confidence, but it also means that if the game gets close again, we have to put our starters back in to close it out, which doesn't feel great for the team's confidence and sets narratives for the CFP committee and voters.

The key thing is that you need to pull the starters when the opponent's starters has no chance of a comeback against our backups. That has both score differential and time components to it, and Michigan is going way up on teams too early for the backups to play the rest of the game and still win comfortably.