Wednesday’s Peach Bowl between Arizona State and Texas proved to be the most exciting game of the expanded College Football Playoff thus far.
But the ending wasn’t without controversy. Late in the fourth quarter with the game tied and Arizona State driving, a hit by a Longhorns’ defender on a Sun Devils wide receiver sparked a review for targeting. Multiple replay angles shown on the broadcast prompted ESPN’s rules analyst Matt Austin to deem the hit as targeting. However, after a lengthy review, the officials ruled there was no targeting on the play, causing Arizona State’s drive to stall out.
Both teams would later have ample opportunity to win the game in overtime, but the no-call is still a point of contention among the chattering class. On Wednesday night’s edition of SportsCenter with Scott Van Pelt, SVP had ESPN college football analyst Dusty Dvoracek on to discuss the call.
“That’s targeting a hundred times out of a hundred. It wasn’t in this case.”
Scott Van Pelt on the controversial non-targeting call late in the Arizona State-Texas game. pic.twitter.com/2e7tFO64O6
— Awful Announcing (@awfulannouncing) January 2, 2025
“That’s targeting a hundred times out of a hundred. It wasn’t in this case. What’d you see, what’d you think?” Van Pelt asked Dvoracek.
“I thought it was targeting,” Dvoracek said. “I thought it was targeting in the moment. I picked up the phone, I made a few phone calls. I talked to Bill LeMonnier, who I think is one of the absolute best. Works for us at ESPN/ABC as a rules expert, and he said verbatim, ‘It’s a defenseless player. There was an upward thrust indicator. Forcible contact to the head or neck area. It’s targeting.’
“But having said that,” Dvoracek continued, “even if they call the targeting, it doesn’t guarantee Arizona State wins that game.”
“I think cosmically, the fact that in the end, it does end up in overtime and then both teams had opportunities to win it, all things being considered, that felt like the appropriate way for this game to end,” Van Pelt concluded.
As SVP said, targeting or not, the game felt like it had a fair ending. All Arizona State had to do was stop Texas on a 4th and 13 in overtime to win it. They didn’t. Likewise, Texas ended up missing a 38-yard field goal at the end of regulation to send the game to overtime in the first place, a classic “ball don’t lie” scenario if one felt the targeting call was missed.
When this game is remembered years down the line, it won’t be the targeting no-call that’s looked back on. It’ll be the many incredible plays down the stretch from players on both teams.
So is it fair to question why the call went one way and not the other? Of course, especially when viewed in the context of the many seemingly less severe targeting calls from earlier in the season. But did it end up costing Arizona State the game? Of course not.
[Awful Announcing on X]
