Sports - Columnists - Jim Mashek

Saturday, Oct. 24, 2009

Fake punt call dooms Bulldogs shot at an upset

STARKVILLE

Mississippi State’s defense did everything in its power to strike for the biggest upset of the college football season to date.

Maybe a little bit more.

And it wasn’t going to be enough, not against a relentless Florida squad, not against Tim Tebow and the resourceful Gators.

Florida converted two critical MSU blunders into fourth-quarter touchdowns and beat the Bulldogs going away, winning 29-19 before a record crowd of 57,178 at Scott Field.

Mississippi State trailed by just three points when it went into punt formation with about 12 minutes left of the game at its 27-yard line. The Bulldogs needed 2 yards for the first down.

It was no time to get cute.

Punt the ball, rely on your defense, make something happen when you can. It was a strategy that had served the Bulldogs well for the first three quarters.

Instead, first-year MSU coach Dan Mullen went for broke.

And it backfired like a 1959 Edsel.

State’s punter, Heath Hutchins, took the snap from center and made a move toward the line of scrimmage, ostensibly to try to draw the Gators toward him.

The Bulldogs’ Robert Elliott then took the ball on an end around of sorts, and the play never had a chance. He slipped trying to turn the corner on the right side and took a 5-yard loss.

The Gators needed a few plays to get in the end zone, with Chris Rainey doing the honors from 8 yards out.

Florida would roll with that momentum, batting a pass from the Bulldogs’ undersized quarterback, Tyson Lee, into the air before Dustin Doe made the interception and scored on a 26-yard return.

All of a sudden, it was 29-13 and the Bulldogs were pretty much out of it.

Then, strangely, Urban Meyer made a curious decision of his own.

The Gators got the ball at their 1-yard line after an interception by Major Wright with four minutes left, and all they had to do was kill some clock, hit the showers and get out of Dodge.

Instead, Tebow tried to pass out of his end zone, got drilled and served up one of the weakest interceptions you’ll ever see, with State’s Jonathan Banks making the interception at the 20-yard line and scoring to make it 29-19.

Banks had already gotten State back in the game by going the length of the field in the final moments of the first half on an interception return, a play that made it 13-10 at halftime.

It was a play that injected life into the Bulldogs and their raucous, cowbell-clanging crowd.

Banks’ second TD of the game gave State a glimmer of hope, but it was quickly extinguished when Mullen called another gadget play on the two-point conversion. MSU’s Chad Bumphis tried to throw the ball on a slow-developing reverse, and he never even got a chance to throw the ball.

It was pretty much academic at that point, barring a meltdown of epic proportions, but the way this game was going, you couldn’t be sure.

Mississippi State has shown some improvement in its first season under Mullen, and the Bulldogs could be a pretty fair SEC team within a year or two.

But there’s a time and a place for everything, and a fake punt from your own 27-yard line in a three-point game is neither the time nor the place for that kind of tomfoolery.