left, but it turns out the ESPN scoreboard was incorrect—SMU didn’t have any timeouts remaining. According to ESPN’s play-by-play, SMU used their first timeout with 10:42 left in the 3rd quarter, their second with 2:19 in the 3rd, and their third with 1:58 in the 4th. While it probably wouldn’t have made much difference if they had one timeout left and used it with 18 seconds remaining, stranger things have happened. At first, I thought it reflected poorly on our coaches for allowing SMU even the chance to get the ball back, but it looks like SMU didn’t have any timeouts, so the coaches can be exonerated in this case.

Edit: I was wrong. The 1:58 TO was the 2-minute timeout that’s new to college football this year. So SMU did have a TO left.