No, you can't prove that field goal was good. Neither can anyone else. The equipment and the rulebook were built to leave this exact moment unprovable.
Virginia Tech lost to Pittsburgh 35-33 on Friday night at Lane Stadium. With three seconds left, John Love lined up a 36-yarder that would have won it 36-35. It sailed high and tight to the upright. The official standing under the post waved it no good immediately, and that was the game. Pitt walked out of Blacksburg still unbeaten. No review, no second look. The on-field ruling is official and final.
That's where the anger should land. A sport that prints money every single Saturday decided the ending of a one-score conference game on the eyesight of one man standing under a pole, with no camera positioned to confirm or overturn him. Will Compton said it plainly watching along: "We can't even see if he made it." That alone indicts how the whole thing is set up. College football, swimming in television cash, still asks a human to guess whether a ball cleared a bar twenty feet above his head, then forbids anyone from checking.
The suspicion that the broadcast buried the clear angle is the part I don't buy. There was no clear angle to bury. The footage that surfaced didn't settle it, because the cameras weren't built to answer that exact question. You can't hide a shot that doesn't exist.
The honest read of what footage there is cuts against Virginia Tech as much as it cuts for them. The call might be exactly right. We'll never know, because the system was built so we can't.
The frustration is justified. Jimbo Fisher called for lasers and taller goalposts a while back and got treated like he was joking. He had a point. The technology to end this argument for good is cheap next to what these programs spend on nearly everything else, and the sport keeps choosing not to buy it. That's a decision, made year after year, and this game is the bill coming due.
James Franklin can question the officiating all he wants from the Virginia Tech sideline, and he's got every right to. The ACC can fine Pat Narduzzi for his postgame words. The NCAA can defer to the ACC, and the ACC can defer to whoever's next. None of that gives anyone a straight answer, because the people in charge made sure a straight answer was impossible. They had the money to fix this and the will to ignore it. The sport robbed somebody Friday night, on purpose. John Love was just standing there when the bill came due.
