In the heat of the moment, BYU football coach Kalani Sitake seemed confused as to why Arizona State wasn’t assessed an unsportsmanlike penalty for fans storming the field early before BYU’s final play.
And after the game, Sitake was equally surprised that someone accessed a space in the stadium that was supposed to be off-limits to anyone outside of visiting team personnel and released a recording of senior defensive end Tyler Batty’s halftime speech to social media.
“Obviously, not super appropriate to have an employee of the school you are at take a video of a private team moment like that,” center Connor Pay said. “But at the end of the day, honestly, we don’t care that much.”
Sitake said the Big 12 league offices were looking into everything that happened in the aftermath of BYU’s 28-23 loss to the Sun Devils. That included penalties on the field, and videos off of it.
“Yeah, the Big 12 is looking into it,” Sitake said. “They’re reviewing everything that happened in the game. From off [the field] to on the field.
“They’re handling all that. Even the recording. They’ll deal with it. I think I trust the Big 12 leadership and just let them handle that,” he continued.
On Tuesday, the Big 12 issued a public reprimand and fined Arizona State $25,000 for the field storming.
“The safety of student-athletes and all game participants is our foremost priority,” Big 12 Commissioner Brett Yormark said in a statement. “We will continue to work with our institutions on event management policies at all Big 12 venues.”
The ending of the game was a chaotic scene. Arizona State was trying to bleed out the clock with seven seconds remaining. It had quarterback Sam Leavitt run around in the backfield and then chuck the ball to the sidelines, hoping the time would expire.
But when Leavitt threw the ball out of bounds, there was still one second left on the clock. BYU was ready to take over and try a Hail Mary from midfield. However, fans stormed the field early.
At that point, security had to clear the field. The goalposts and end zone pylons had to be put back up.
Technically, ASU could have been assessed two penalties: one for intentional grounding by Leavitt to throw the ball away when he was pressured. The second was an unsportsmanlike conduct on ASU for fans coming onto the field prematurely.
That would’ve given BYU 15 more yards, possibly more, to set up a more manageable Hail Mary. BYU’s final play ended up two yards short. Immediately after the game, Sitake said the conference didn’t want to give the unsportsmanlike penalty to ASU.
“We thought there was going to be an [unsportsmanlike penalty],” Sitake said. “... I was told the conference said there would be no unsportsmanlike penalty. It was the conference’s decision. This game didn’t come down to that.”
