It appears Northern Colorado was completely screwed out of a win at Colorado State

The situation: Colorado State leads Northern Colorado 21-17, but UNC has the ball at the CSU 28-yard line with 13 seconds to play. Bears quarterback Eric Gibson, Jr., lofts the ball into double coverage near the right pylon, but it doesn't matter. Carver Cheeks was down there somewhere, and Cheeks comes down with the ball. Northern Colorado leads 23-21, putting them an extra point and one defensive stop away from one of the biggest wins in school history.

Until replay got involved.

Here's how the play unfolded live.

At first blush, I didn't see anything that warranted a review, but we're watching the TV copy and we're not trained to officiate football games. This clip slows it down and provides multiple angles.

The ball is clearly moving within Cheeks's arms, but point to me the angle where it touches the ground. 

I'm not here to claim the game officials conspired to give Colorado State the game. If there's a conspiracy at play here, it's a long-standing, over-arching one: Replay Creep. 

Here is how replay is supposed to work, taken from the first paragraph of the first page of the NCAA's 2025 Football Instant Replay Casebook, from a section titled "Purpose and Philosophy."

In reality, that section is all together ignored. Once a play goes to replay, the call on the field is ignored and the replay official determines his own judgment, often piecing together multiple angles to make rulings based on circumstantial evidence. I wrote this in 2019:

(Replay has) gone from, Oh, his foot was clearly out of bounds to If you slow it down, zoom in and look at *this* angle, you can see his foot hit a blade of white turf first, so we're saying he was out of bounds. The burden of proof has gone from criminal court -- where any conviction must be beyond a reasonable doubt -- to civil court, where standard is simply "more likely than not." What the actual, on-field officials saw develop in front of their eyes right in front of them is now just evidence to consider while the omniscient oracles in the replay command center decide amongst themselves what really happened.

Again, the call on the field was touchdown. Does any angle you saw above show that to be clearly and obviously wrong?

Perhaps we're only getting part of the story here. We may not see everything the officials see. Between the 0:15 and 0:17 marks above, we can see the ball move as Cheeks rolls over before the TV crew cuts away. Maybe DV Sport caught something Altitude Sports did not show us. And if that's the case, the Mountain West is still in the wrong for not following the UFL and the ACC's lead in broadcasting deliberations between the on-field official and the demigods back in MW's replay command center. 

“That would be the only communication that would be expected,” Northern Colorado head coach Ed Lamb, via the Greeley Tribune. “I don’t have any access to the replay official. Really, neither do the officials on the sideline. The officials on our sideline charged with communicating to me, they communicated everything they could.”

Even the beneficiaries of the overturn struggled to explain it. “It appeared they had the winning score,” Colorado State head coach Jay Norvell said. “The ball bounced our way and we won the game.”

“The receiver made a heck of a play,” added Rams linebacker Jacob Ellis. “Lemondre was right there. It was great coverage. You know, football is a game of inches.”

The gap between catch and incompletion for Northern Colorado was taller than Mount Elbert for Northern Colorado. Adding insult to injury, Cheeks was flagged for unsportsmanlike conduct, pushing UNC back to CSU's 43-yard line. The Bears moved back to the 28 after pass interference on the ensuing play, and Gibson's final heave was intercepted at the goal line. Instead of a likely 24-21 win and one of the sweetest victories in their 132-year football history, Northern Colorado instead lost to Colorado State for the 20th consecutive time. 

And it all hinged on a call that was clearly and obviously not clear and obvious.