An unbelievable final play in a Utah high school playoff game shows it can be important to be as smart on the field as in the classroom.
A senior quarterback on a Utah varsity football team, forgetting that a play isn’t over until the whistle blows, gave up the ball and a 3-point lead on the last play of a play-in game for the state championship tournament, Deseret News reports.
The game between the Spanish Fork Dons and the Maple Mountain Golden Eagles took place on Tuesday, Oct 28, in Provo. With 3.7 seconds left, quarterback Jason Money took a fourth-down snap at his own 37-yard line.
All he had to do was kill a few seconds and take a knee, throw the ball out of bounds, or run any of several other plays designed to run out the clock.
Instead, he casually started walking toward the sidelines as if the play was over. But the play wasn’t over.
Pursuing the quarterback, defenders Jason Blanthorn and Brandon Beebe made high school football history, when Blanthorn swatted the ball out of Money’s hand and Beebe scooped it up and returned it about 25 yards for a game-winning touchdown.
“I knew it might be the last play of my whole career, so I might as well give it my all and things happened for us,” the paper quoted Beebe as saying. “The clock’s not over until you go down.”
Maple Mountain coach Brad Burtenshaw gave his players all the credit for this one.
“The credit for that intellectual play goes to the players,” he was quoted as saying. “We have a smart team—kids on the honor roll—and the kid that actually stripped it is a 4.0 student. We’re always told, ‘Keep playing until the whistle.’ … The credit goes to the kids and continuing to play. That’s the bottom line.”
MSN reported from 120 Sports that Money had signed a letter of intent to play for Florida State next year.
