Lane Kiffin left Lexington on Saturday with a one-point overtime loss along with a story about a whistle that never came.
Kentucky beat #10 LSU 35-34 in overtime, and on Sunday Kiffin shared with reporters on their weekly teleconference call what a line judge said to him about a quarterback sneak late in the first half.
Wildcats quarterback Kenny Minchey appeared to be stopped short at the goal line, but the Wildcats' offensive line kept driving and a second surge carried him across for a 21-17 halftime lead.
"The line judge just said that, in that situation, there was too much at stake," Kiffin said. "He said he would have been killed if he had blown the whistle for the play being stopped, even though it appeared to be stopped."
"My complaint is that you can't refuse to blow the whistle because it's such a big play," Kiffin insisted. "If you would have blown that whistle on first down, or with 10 minutes left in the game, for forward progress being stopped, then blow it for protection and for the way the ruling is supposed to work. Don't not blow it because it's such a big play. The rules are the rules. If you see it that way, then see it that way."
"That's my complaint. It comes down to blowing the whistle."
Kiffin also questioned another controversial sequence in overtime. LSU quarterback Sam Leavitt ran for a touchdown and the extra point put the Tigers up seven. Kentucky answered with a 1-yard CJ Baxter touchdown run, and for the second week in a row, Will Stein chose to go for two. Officials flagged a false start on the try after one of the wings flinched, but instead of enforcing the penalty, it appeared Stein had been calling timeout and the officials granted Kentucky that timeout.
"The false start happens, they're going to move it back, and they're going to kick the extra point," Kiffin said.
Instead, Minchey found a crease up the middle on the two-point try and Kentucky won 35-34. It was the Wildcats' second straight overtime win by that exact score, a week after a 35-34 win at South Carolina.
Forward progress is a judgment call, and nobody wants an official killing a goal-line push a half-second early. But the explanation Kiffin says he got is a different issue, and one that a lot of coaches will side with him on. A whistle that depends on the stakes of the moment isn't a rule at all, instead it's a feeling. The forward progress whistle exists in large part to protect the ball carrier and everyone piled around him, and that doesn't change with seconds left in the half.
All we have is Kiffin's account of a sideline conversation. The official's side of it hasn't been made public, and in all likelihood won't.
The loss dropped LSU to 4-2 and from No. 10 to No. 22 in the AP Poll. It was LSU's third straight loss in Lexington and its eighth straight road loss to an SEC opponent. Kentucky climbed to #15 and heads to Oklahoma next, while LSU hosts Mississippi State.
Stay tuned to The Scoop for the latest.