Knee, Timeout, Knee. On the 1.

I believe they (Michigan) called a timeout BEFORE the kneel down. 

Word on twitter was the timeout was called pre-snap as the coaches had wanted a player on each side of JJ to guard against the possibility of a fumbled snap (would imagine their eyes were on the ball the whole time)

Believe this is correct. TO from the sideline but the play ran before they could stop it. Clock went all the way down to 1 sec( If I remember right?) Then they reset to 0:12 after the TO and ran the play for keeps.

I was confused as well and it wasn't explained during the broadcast. But the explanation I've read is that after the Corum 1 yard run, Alabama called their final timouet. Then when Michigan was about to take their knee, Michigan called a timeout because they noticed Corum was too far back in the endzone. But JJ snapped it and kneed anyway but technically the knee never occurred. So Michigan goes back out with 2 players immediately behind JJ and then do a normal kneel down and it was still 2nd and 9, confirming the 1st Michigan kneel down did not occur

The funny thing to me is that if you look in the 21 minute ESPN highlight package on youtube, the kneel that never happened is the one they show right before going to OT (not that it matters)

Apoplectic. How long have you been waiting to work THAT into a conversation? Ha  

It wasn't very obvious on the regular ESPN broadcast, but I somehow DVR'd one of the auxiliary feeds that had much better field audio.  It was very clear from that alt. feed rewatch that the timeout was before the first kneel down.

The other way you can tell (no help from the announcing crew) was the down did not change after the first kneel down and timeout.  The play didn't happen.

I can't blame you for the reaction in the moment.  I know my heart had not recovered from the near disaster of mishandling the punt.

Oooh, so it makes sense now.

The first kneel down never happened.

On the broadcast they made it look like Harbaugh just randomly called timeout with 5 seconds on the clock after it was about to expire.

Fowler was asking, "they wouldn't dare throw a Hail Mary, would they?"

Does Wayne Brady have to choke a bitch?

The first, second down kneel didn't count. 

My friend said it was a blown thing by ESPN the timeouts were called by Bama.

Basically it was a graphics issue.

Also curious watching it live, from somewhat behind them (Sec 23). Best I could come up with is maybe they called a timeout at the last second to let the play still run, but to gauge if JJ had enough room to take the knee with a “do over” still to come. 

If you were at the game you should have heard the referee explain that Michigan called timeout before the snap. From TV it was not as clear to what had happened. 

Another failure of the announcers to, you know, announce the game. They were too busy with quasi-flowery unrelated verbiage to actually tell the audience what was happening with the actual game.

I think I mentioned this earlier - I believe ESPN screwed up the timeouts on the screen and took one away from Bama - I cannot quite remember when it actually happened but you can tell Harbaugh looked confused as to who called a TO and even said something along the lines of "they call a TO?" to the official before looking at the scoreboard to see who had what remaining. I am fairly certain that is exactly how it all went down.

Definitely was a wild moment - even before that when Thaw fumbled the ball and it looked like the spin would carry it into the endzone then all of a sudden it spun differently and just twisted on its axis just before the goal-line - crazy sequence - que sera, sera. 

I don't know exactly what happened, but the first kneeldown didn't count for some reason. It remained 2nd down with 12 seconds left when they did it the second time.