Nick Marsh’s front foot came down a few inches on the wrong side of the end zone line with about a minute left on what would have been the go-ahead touchdown, and that single detail is the entire reason Indiana’s 22-game winning streak is over instead of still breathing on some officiating technicality. Nobody needed a booth review to make the call, and nobody needed a challenge flag. Josh Hoover threw a perfect fourth-and-4 pass to a wide-open receiver in the front corner of the end zone, Marsh caught it clean, and his toe simply wasn’t where it needed to be when he landed. That’s the whole story of how No. 5 Indiana’s historic run ended against No. 4 Ohio State, 19-15, and it’s a crueler way to lose than a blown call ever could have been.
A blown call gives a fan base a villain, a conspiracy to relitigate for twenty years, a referee’s name to boo on sight. Indiana doesn’t get any of that. Yahoo Sports reported the streak that ended here was 22 straight wins dating back to Week 1 of last season, the longest active run in FBS, on top of a separate 19-game home streak. Marsh put his hands on his helmet the instant he landed, and ESPN noted the call simply stood, no review needed and no dispute from either sideline, the clearest sign of all that he already knew.
I’ve rewatched the replay of that landing more times than I’ve watched any touchdown this season, and it tells you the same thing every time: that foot wasn’t close enough to argue about.
Indiana had chances to make this a different, uglier kind of loss. They turned the ball over on fumbles on back-to-back second-half possessions and had kicking issues all afternoon. Ohio State kept converting on fourth down when it mattered most, including a 38-yard touchdown to Jeremiah Smith that Bleacher Report’s box score shows coming on exactly that kind of down-and-distance gamble paying off.
Ohio State paid for the win in its own way. Julian Sayin left in the fourth quarter with a right arm injury after taking a sack, and Ryan Day said afterward his quarterback would “probably be out several weeks”; Hoover got banged up on Indiana’s side and still finished the game. Only one of those two teams, though, is walking away with a streak that’s now a museum piece instead of a live thing.
Even the neutral reaction cut right to it:
https://twitter.com/CBeasmoreSports/status/2111544939209281543
That’s the version of this loss Indiana has to carry into next week — a receiver whose foot landed an inch too early on the biggest throw of the season, nothing more complicated than that. For the rest of this week’s college football fallout, the margins keep getting smaller and nobody’s arguing about where the lines are anymore.
Twenty-two games. One foot. No appeal.
