Big Ten Officials Face Scrutiny for Reversing Onside Kick Ruling After Being Pressured by Opponents

Michigan State was trailing Illinois 31-24 with less than eight minutes left, and Pat Fitzgerald wasn’t interested in waiting for his defense to make another stop. He gambled on an onside kick, hoping to steal a possession and keep the Spartans’ comeback alive. But what should have been a game-changing opportunity quickly turned into an officiating controversy.

Freshman Samson Gash almost made Fitzgerald’s gamble pay off. He raced roughly 15 yards down the sideline and dove on the ball, seemingly giving Michigan State another chance to tie the game. But the celebration didn’t last. Officials flagged Gash for being offside, wiping out the recovery and killing what could have been a crucial possession for the Spartans.

What followed was even more baffling. The initial call should have been straightforward. But the officials turned a crucial fourth-quarter moment into a sequence of announcements that left every player and viewer trying to figure out what was happening. Spartans Illustrated captured the confusion in a post on X.

“The ruling is that Samson Gash was NOT inbounds on the onside kick recovery, which gives Illinois the ball at midfield instead of a re-kick,” it wrote. “BUT WAIT. Now the officials are saying that he IS inbounds, but the offsides still stands. MSU will kick the ball off again.”

Replay officials first examined whether Samson Gash had recovered the kick in bounds. The referee then announced that Gash was out of bounds, a ruling that would have handed Illinois the ball without another kick. But that wasn’t the end of it.

After another look at the footage, the officials reversed that part of the decision. Gash had been in bounds when he secured the ball. That meant Michigan State would get another opportunity to kick, with the five-yard penalty for the offside infraction still enforced. The rule is that replay could fix the in-bounds call, but not the offside flag. So, that penalty stayed put, killing Michigan State’s recovery and a chance to pull level.

The television broadcast offered another reason to question the flag. Rules analyst Mike Pereira pointed out that Samson Gash appeared to be roughly half a yard behind the kicker when the ball was struck. If that positioning was correct, the offside ruling deserved a much closer look. FootballScoop’s Doug Samuels was not impressed by the officials’ handling of the sequence.

“This might be a first,” he posted on X. “Official comes out in MSU v ILLINOIS game to say one thing on the onside kick after review, then another angle becomes available and they change their mind.”

He also questioned why offsides on an onside kick can’t be reviewed. The Big Ten needs to answer that. If officials can check whether a player caught the ball in bounds, why can’t they check his position before the kick? The rule leaves little room to fix a bad call, even with replay footage right there.

The onside kick was also described by observers as the fourth questionable call or no-call against Michigan State during the game. That doesn’t mean every disputed whistle was wrong, but the onside kick mess gave Spartans fans plenty more to gripe about.

A bad break in Pat Fitzgerald’s rebuild

Pat Fitzgerald has enough on his plate already. His first season at Michigan State comes after years of upheaval under Mel Tucker and Jonathan Smith, with Harlon Barnett briefly stepping in between. The program has a long way to go, and days like this only make the climb harder. Turning that around was never going to happen overnight. The Spartans need better execution, more consistency and enough momentum to start winning games that remain within reach.

That is why the onside kick mattered. At 31-24, Michigan State was trying to manufacture one more opportunity. Gash appeared to deliver it, only for the officials’ decisions to send the play in another direction. The Spartans still had to execute, and there was no guarantee the recovery would have produced a touchdown. But football games often turn on a single possession. 

Michigan State now moves on to a home matchup against Northwestern on Saturday, Oct. 17, before traveling to the Rose Bowl to face UCLA. The Big Ten should have questions to answer before then. 

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