After listening to 1460 this afternoon, I thought I might have been overreacting about some of the bad calls, so I just watched a replay of the last couple drives as well as some of the other questionable calls early on.
The fix was definitely in. There's really no other way to explain what happened.
What makes it worse was the commentator saying things like "the defensive backs gotta be physical with Allen Lazard" while he's 15 yards downfield. Uh what? So the bigger and stronger the guy is, the more I'm allowed to grab him?
The headshot Kempt takes while sliding? Look, even if you think the K-State player was already kinda falling down while trying to initiate a diving tackle, the NCAA and NFL both should be enforcing penalties like that. You can't hit a sliding quarterback. Period. Kempt initiated the slide, THEN got hit in the head. There's no way that should EVER not be called a penalty in this day and age. It's up to the defender to maintain enough control so as to NOT hit a sliding quarterback. There's really no grey area here.
I haven't seen on the replay where people are saying an ISU player should have been called for targeting, but I'm pretty sure I'd agree with it if a flag were to be thrown. (anyone got a timestamp for a youtube replay or something I could look at for that one?)
That offensive pass interference call on the pick play on ISU's last drive was some bull, also. Lazard's d-back was jamming him right into k-state's other d-back. Both Lazard and the k-state d-back lowered their shoulders. Mutually initiated contact, with Lazard being pushed by K-state's guy. That's exactly what that play is designed to do and it's perfectly legal. If Lazard just straight up ran into the guy without being shoved by the K-state defensive back, then yeah, it's illegal, but that's not what happened.
The list goes on and on and on. People can argue that bad calls were made or missed both ways. Yes, that's true, but guess what? When the calls mattered most, they went KSU's way. A couple were debateable, but most were blatant missed/botched calls.
Have I even mentioned the refs spotting the ball on the 3 on the last play of the game, essentially giving KSU an additional timeout?