EAST LANSING - Michigan State had the onside kick it wanted, the crowd had the comeback buzz it wanted, and Pat Fitzgerald had a moment he said he’d never quite seen before.
Liam Boyd’s kick came off clean and curled toward the Illinois sideline, where Samson Gash raced down and hauled it in with two hands before rolling to the turf. Spartan Stadium reacted like a rally was starting. MSU trailed by seven with 7:47 left.
Then the flag arrived, and the whole thing unraveled into one of those replay sessions that leaves everybody louder and less certain than before.
“I prefer to talk to the Big Ten officials,” Fitzgerald said when asked about the play. “I’ll just talk to them.
My vantage point, we were not offsides. My vantage point, we recovered the ball.
My vantage point is that it was one of the more confusing plays I’ve ever seen, for sure.”
The Spartans were not robbed of a win in Saturday, Oct. 10’s 38-37 overtime loss to Illinois. They forced a stop, tied the game on Jaziun Patterson’s 2-yard touchdown run, then scored in overtime before deciding to go for two and the win. That try failed on a botched play.
Still, the offsides call - one Fitzgerald never directly attacked, even while clearly fuming - left its mark.
“You couldn’t review being onside on the kick. That's what they told me,” Fitzgerald said.
Big Ten senior vice president of communications David Bassity told The Detroit News that offsides is a judgment call and therefore not reviewable.
What made the whole sequence so maddening was the split-screen of what people thought they saw versus what the officials ultimately decided. Fans on the scoreboard saw a still image that appeared to show Gash onside by nearly a foot.
They booed. They chanted.
They also watched officials first review whether Gash had recovered the ball inbounds, then rule that he had been out of bounds, which would have handed possession to Illinois. After “additional video” was cited, that ruling was overturned, setting up another kickoff.
By then, Boyd simply blasted the second one into the end zone.
The flag itself came from umpire Keith Vaverchak, who also worked the onside kick flag in Minnesota’s loss to Michigan in 2024, the play that led the Big Ten to change its kickoff procedures and require a second official to watch for offsides on onside kicks. Those procedures were in place Saturday, though MSU’s version came on a trick play from a standard kickoff formation.
Vaverchak was also part of the crew in Michigan’s controversial win over Western Michigan this season, when a second was added to the clock. The NCAA later said replay rules weren’t followed properly, and the Big Ten then allowed fans to hear into its replay process - something some Spartan supporters got to experience during the long delay.
Illinois coach Bret Bielema said after the game that he had already been speaking to the referee about a previous missed call on a potential touchdown, and he was the one who shouted that Gash was offsides.
"I saw the flag go, and then I saw the pop-up, right, so I knew it was gonna be - and then I swear I saw him land on the white," said Bielema, whose sideline the play happened in front of. "I don't know where his feet were, but he caught it and I know that the ball is retained by where you land.
"I have never seen anything stop, tell us something and then come back. I've never seen or witnessed that, but I got a lot of confidence in the Big Ten office.
I'm sure what they saw is what they saw. They told me they found another angle.
I don't know if someone phoned a friend. ... I did know that if he landed out of bounds it was gonna be our ball plus five (yards), and if he was offsides then we were gonna have to rekick and obviously that's the way it kinda played out."
For Fitzgerald, the kick was also a window into the edge his team has shown under pressure. He said the play had been kept in the back pocket for the right moment, and that the execution was exactly what he hoped for.
"We've been kind of saving it for when we thought we could get it," Fitzgerald said. "When the right moment presented itself, just really good execution by Liam and Samson.
I mean, it was just how you dial it up. Perfect.
You gotta use every blade of grass on that play.
"The coaching point is to make sure you're onside. We were onside.
We were not offsides. And so, that is what it is."
That visible frustration from Fitzgerald was not lost on his players, either. Edge rusher Kenny Soares Jr., who Fitzgerald once recruited to Northwestern before his firing, said that fire is part of why he stayed with him.
“I’ve known Coach Fitz for a very long time,” Soares said. “The fire that you see from him is the reason why I’m back, 100%. Like, I wouldn’t want my head coach to be any other way.”
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