This week's College Football Things: A 330-pound touchdown and a 64-yard field goal

I'm going to write about my personal favorite college football things every week!

Hey all—my initial plan of writing a Big Monday College Football Recap post is clearly not working. Maybe I’m in my head about it, but I wound up writing about 4,000 words on Sunday, then spending Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday rewriting and tweaking and adding and well eventually it wasn’t worth it anymore.

So instead, I’m going to try to highlight my three favorite college football things every week. Next week, you’ll get them on Monday, but… you’re getting last week’s today, on a Friday afternoon. Sorry! I hope you enjoy it anyway.

Then next Wednesday or Thursday I’m going to write something for everybody who followed me for Olympics coverage—a roundup of every Miscellaneous Sports thing you may have missed in September.

A TD 11 months in the making

Last Friday night, Illinois ran the least subtle trick play in the history of trick plays—but in doing so, raised a very subtle middle finger and exorcised some rule-related ghosts.

In 2023, Wisconsin beat Illinois on a last-minute touchdown pass to offensive lineman Nolan Rucci—a play that clearly irked Illinois head coach Bret Bielema for highly technical reasons that probably had nothing to do with the success of the play. Days after the loss, Bielema gave a lengthy press conference explaining exactly why he felt Wisconsin’s play was underhanded.

This year, on a critical fourth quarter fourth down against Nebraska, Illinois scored with a thematically similar play, a pass to 335-pound offensive lineman Brandon Henderson. Henderson was completely unguarded and easily got into the end zone for a six-yard touchdown, the first of his career. (“I had a celebration planned, but I didn’t get to do it because everybody attacked me,” he told reporters.)

Henderson usually wears #75, but you can see he’s wearing a #94 jersey with a blank nameplate on his touchdown catch. That’s because in order to be eligible to catch a forward pass in college football, a player must be wearing a number outside of the 50-79 range. (A normal sport with easy-to-follow rules that everybody understands!) In the NFL, a player can report as an eligible receiver no matter their number—as happened on this week’s edition of Monday Night Football when Washington lineman Trent Scott caught a touchdown wearing #73. As long as they announce their eligibility status before the play, they’re good to go. In college, linemen literally have to change their jersey number. So Illinois printed up a huge blank jersey for Henderson to come in on this play and catch the ball.

This is not particularly unique or controversial. Players somewhat regularly have to switch jersey numbers over the course of the game—for example, to avoid sharing the field with a player wearing the same number.

And when a player changes uniform numbers mid-game, they have always been obligated to report to the referee, who announces the uniform change to the opposing team.

What irked Bielema last year is that Rucci didn’t announce his uniform change. He normally wears #66, but was wearing #93 on his game-winning touchdown catch—but his number change wasn’t reported or announced to Illinois. The ensuing saga is explained in this 25-minute YouTube video:

In an angry press conference, Bielema claimed he didn’t even know the touchdown was caught by Rucci until the next day when he looked at the stat sheet. He said his staff noted Rucci was wearing his typical number in warmups, and that he believed players needed to report to the referee if they wore a different number in a game from what they wore in warmups. He filed a protest to the Big Ten… who informed him what Wisconsin did was actually legal. When Rucci came in wearing #93, it was his first play of the game. Therefore, he didn’t have to announce a uniform number change, since he hadn’t played any prior snaps wearing #66. The fact that he’d worn a different number in warmups—not a game, warmups—was irrelevant.

I think what Wisconsin did is totally fine—I actually appreciate the gamesmanship involved. (And quite frankly, I don’t think Illinois would have been more likely to defend Rucci if they’d known he was an offensive lineman rather than a defensive end.)

But in the offseason, the NCAA made a highly technical rule change clearly responding to Bielema’s complaints. Players now have to report to the referee any time they wear a jersey number besides the one listed on the official gameday roster—even if it’s their first snap of the game. Loophole closed.

When Illinois threw to Henderson, they had to follow those new rules put in place because of Bielema. This should have made it very obvious to Nebraska what was happening. The biggest guy on the field had to change clothes, putting on the most conspicuous piece of clothing possible—an orange XXXXXXXL jersey with a blank nameplate, making clear he was eligible to catch a pass. He reported his new jersey number to a referee, who got on a microphone and told everybody in the building that Illinois was legally able to throw to Henderson. And when they threw to Henderson, he was still completely unguarded. They essentially put a giant flashing red arrow on a bear-sized human, letting Nebraska know they needed to defend him… and Nebraska didn’t. Illinois went on to win in overtime, and Bielema also won his year-long war against a rule even he didn’t know existed.

A Kick for the ages at Temple

There are about 11,000 FBS scholarship football players, and of these, “the kicker for Temple” feels like it should be around 9,478th on my radar. Like, if I was the guy in charge of assigning player ratings for EA CFB 25, I’m giving that guy a 64 power and 62 accuracy, making up some speed and blocking numbers and moving on with my day.

But clearly I’ve been overlooking Maddux Trujillo, a transfer from Austin Peay. (Your Temple Kicker Name is the last name of the Cy Young winner from when you were eight years old and a murderous 20th century dictator—mine is Glavine Pinochet.) Last week against Utah State, Trujillo drilled a 64-yarder—the longest kick in college football since UTEP’s Jose Martinez hit a 64-yarder in 2008.

Trujillo’s kick would have been the longest field goal in NFL history until 2021, when Justin Tucker hit a 66-yarder But unlike NFL kickers, Trujillo had to kick from the outside hash, about six yards wide of the upright. Unlike the Northwestern players in the absolute worst school advertisement in the history of school advertisements, I refuse to do any Pythagorean theorem calculations while talking football, but I bet that’s like a 66-yarder when you factor in the angle.

Technically, the longest field goal in college football history was a 69-yarder by Abilene Christian’s Ove Johannson in 1976. But college kickers were allowed to use tees until 1989, so it hardly feels fair to list the Swede’s massive boot as the record. The no-tee record is a 65-yarder by Martin Gramatica in 1998.

Temple was trailing big at half—but outscored Utah State 31-8 to close the game, winning 45-29. Clearly, Trujillo’s kick inspired them to what might be their only win of the year. (Last night, Army had 417 rushing yards against Temple; Temple had negative 5. Normally I present these things like “Good Team outgained Bad Team 307-23” but I couldn’t do that here because it would have looked like “417--5” and the dash would have looked too much like the negative symbol.)

We’re in the golden era of kickers, as evidenced by Cowboys kicker Brandon Aubrey drilling 60-yarders with ease every week. Kicking was overlooked for decades—just let some soccer kid do it—but has now been honed into a science. Training is better, more specialized, and starts earlier. But I also think that’s broadly true of every position in every sport. The difference is, the improvements in, say, pitching have been balanced out by improvements in hitting. In kicking, there is no counter to the gains of our big-legged boys. We just get to sit back and marvel at the booming, once-impossible kicks drilled week after week by kickers from the top to the bottom of our sport.

A Michigan Throwback

It broadly feels like we’ve lost the concept of conferences having identities. But Michigan’s mauling of USC in the Trojans’ first Big Ten game showed there’s some vestigial #B1G still lurking in the transfigured Big Ten.

Michigan started the season with an old-school QB battle—no 5-star freshmen, no portal superstars, just two obviously flawed long-time backups. In their first three games, they started Davis Warren, a one-time walk-on, who refused to stop throwing passes to the opposing team. But they also gave snaps to Alex Orji, a player recruited by some programs as a linebacker, who refused to throw the ball to anybody. After Warren threw three interceptions against Arkansas State, they switched to Orji for the USC game. Perhaps Orji had only been responsible for a particular package during his limited run-run-run-run-run snaps. Surely, as QB1, the offense would open up and we’d see the big man throw.

Nope! Michigan’s strategy with Orji remained run-run-run-run-run. Orji went 7-for-12 for 32 yards against USC—and the Wolverines won, 27-24, powering past the ex-PAC Trojans for 290 rushing yards on over six yards per carry. Trailing late, the Wolverines went on a brutally simple game-winning drive—nine carries for 84 yards by Kalel Mullings and a single completion for ten yards, Michigan’s longest pass play of the game. Mullings is accurately named after Superman, and this was a Bizarro two-minute drill:

Michigan has, stunningly, won the last six games in which they had less than 100 passing yards. They won the national championship last year by Running The Damn Ball. They probably won the 1933 national championship the same damn way. Gerald Ford could’ve been out there. This was not a case of passing futility but passing agnosticism. Michigan does not know whether passing the ball exists and do not want to waste time finding out.

USC is a SoCal team in a Midwestern conference, coached by a West Texas guy running the offense he learned in Lubbock. Michigan is just Michigan, Always have been, probably always will be.