UCF Stuns No. 2 BYU 39-31 in Double Overtime After Chaotic Ending

TL;DR: UCF stunned No. 2 BYU 39-31 in double overtime on Saturday in Orlando, the program’s first win over a top-five opponent. The finish to regulation alone had a reviewed sack, an unsportsmanlike conduct penalty, a blocked field goal and a disputed 10-second runoff, and the second overtime turned on a roughing-the-kicker penalty that gave UCF a fresh set of downs.

Scott Frost said it for everyone in the building. Moments after the win, surrounded by fans on the field, the UCF head coach told Fox sideline reporter Alexa Landestoy it was the strangest finish he had ever seen. He was not exaggerating. The last two minutes of regulation and both overtimes packed in enough officiating arguments for a full season, and the team that kept surviving them was the 6.5-point underdog.

How did regulation end in chaos?

It started quietly enough, then refused to settle. With the game tied at 24 and under two minutes left, BYU stuffed UCF quarterback Keyone Jenkins on fourth-and-goal. The BYU offence then went three-and-out, which should have left a straightforward finish. Instead, the madness began.

Driving for a potential winning field goal, Jenkins was sacked and lost the ball. A replay review changed the ruling to an incomplete pass, and BYU was hit with an unsportsmanlike conduct penalty that put the Knights into field-goal range, the New York Post reports. Awful Announcing identifies the penalised player as defensive tackle Keanu Tanuvasa. Frost then made the first strange choice of the sequence: with 14 seconds left, he sent his offence back out instead of kicking immediately. Jenkins spiked the ball, then threw an incompletion, and Will Stone’s 46-yard attempt was blocked.

That should have been the end of it, except Stone recovered the ball with two seconds on the clock, which looked like one more chance. It was not. BYU ripped Stone’s helmet off during the recovery, and officials applied a 10-second runoff that ended regulation. Former official Terry McAulay disagreed with the call in public, arguing the clock had also stopped because the play was the end of a legal kick down, not only because of the helmet coming off. The argument will run for days. The runoff itself ran for no time at all, because there was none left.

How did the two overtimes unfold?

The first overtime was almost orderly by comparison. BYU quarterback Bear Bachmeier threw a 28-yard touchdown, and Jenkins answered with a 25-yard touchdown pass to Josh Derry to tie the score at 31. The second overtime brought the chaos back. BYU appeared to hold UCF to a field-goal attempt, but Kendal Wall was flagged for roughing the kicker, and the penalty gave UCF a fresh set of downs. Jenkins made the Cougars pay with a touchdown pass and a successful two-point conversion, and BYU failed to answer on its ensuing possession. The final score was 39-31, and fans poured onto the field, sliding down from the stands and chanting around the 50-yard line.

College football has produced its share of wild finishes this season, from Georgia’s win at Alabama turning on a no-call and a sideline dressing-down to the Big 12 conceding a replay error in Notre Dame’s loss at BYU. The NFL had its own officiating admission this month, when the league admitted it flagged the wrong team in the Buccaneers-Cowboys game, and Oregon’s weekend turned on a swing at a quarterback that drew no flag. This one stands apart because the officials were not deciding one play. They were deciding four in a row, and each decision changed who should have won.

What did Frost’s quarterback actually do?

Jenkins threw for 293 yards and three touchdowns in his fifth start since replacing Alonza Barnett III, who is sidelined with a hamstring injury. Frost’s postgame praise was blunt: his backup is not a backup, and he had an unbelievable game. The numbers support the praise, but the sequence supports it more. Jenkins was at the centre of every strange moment in the finish, from the reviewed sack to the spike before the blocked kick to both overtime scoring drives, and he never let the weirdness turn into a mistake that ended the game.

The context makes the performance larger. UCF entered the game 4-3 and unranked, and BYU arrived as the No. 2 team in the country, fresh from upsetting then-No. 2 Notre Dame the week before. The school called the win the program’s highest-ranked victory ever. Frost’s own history with the program adds a layer: he coached UCF’s unbeaten 2017 team, left for Nebraska, and returned for a second stint. Saturday was the first win over a top-five opponent in school history, and it came the way UCF wins tend to come, late and loud.

What does the loss cost BYU?

An unbeaten season, a six-game winning streak, and the quiet part of its playoff case. At 6-1, BYU is still very much alive, and a road loss in double overtime to a conference opponent is the kind of defeat the committee has forgiven before. But the Cougars also lost the argument that they control games. They had UCF stopped on fourth-and-goal, then gave the Knights new life twice in the finish, once with the unsportsmanlike conduct penalty and once with the roughing-the-kicker flag in the second overtime. Good teams survive bad calls. BYU survived most of them and still lost, because the last flag gave UCF a set of downs it had already failed to earn.

What happens next for both teams?

The officiating questions come first. The Big 12 has a recent history of owning its mistakes in public, having conceded the replay error in Notre Dame’s loss at BYU, so a statement on the runoff is plausible. The poll consequences come second. BYU will fall from No. 2, and UCF, at 4-3, will enter the conversation for the rankings for the first time this season. Frost’s team has now beaten the second-ranked team in the country with a backup quarterback. The next question is whether it can play a normal game, because Saturday suggested it may not know how.