After covering college football for more than 20 years as a beat writer for a daily newspaper, one of the conclusions I came to years ago: Officials can control a close game without fans ever noticing.

This may sound like sour grapes, but take it as fact: Illinois received two large breaks Saturday in the monumental upset of No. 1 Ohio State. And for the most part, I would bet that most of the 105,000-plus fans never noticed.

After Ohio State jumped to a 7-0 lead, Illinois running back Daniel Dufrene busted off a long run that ended with the official marking him out of bounds at the OSU 3. The ball came loose but either the nearest official never noticed, or blew the play dead. Inexplicably, the replay system was never utilized.

If it would have been, the call surely would have been overturned because Dufrene clearly fumbled the ball before he even began his descent onto the turf. The football also was recovered by the Buckeyes in the end zone, which would have given Ohio State the ball on the 20-yard line and Illinois never would have scored to tie the game 7-7.

Later, the touchdown that gave Illinois a 21-14 lead just before halftime appeared at first to be a broken coverage by Ohio State’s secondary. In reality, it was a designed pick play in which the Buckeyes’ defensive back assigned to the Illini receiver was knocked to the ground by Illinois’ Aurealius Benn, enabling him to break wide open.

An official, staring at the infraction, never reached for his flag. If he had, the Illini would have been penalized 10 yards and likely wouldn’t have scored their third touchdown of the day to take a seven-point lead into halftime.

Without the benefit of replay, fans could sit throughout that three-and-a- half-hour game and not notice either officials’ mistake, let alone the several would-be holding calls on Illinois’ offensive line that seemed to escape the officials’ eyes.

Those are two plays that the Ohio State coaching staff surely noticed in Sunday’s film review. And if they are wise, the tapes will be forwarded to the Big Ten office so the officiating crew can be disciplined or reprimanded, if that step is necessary.

That being said, Ohio State didn’t deserve to win the game simply because the Buckeyes’ defense could not get Illinois’ offense off the field. It appeared as if the Buckeyes didn’t spend a moment preparing for the spread option. They were confused several times, and often played a five and six-man front, before running several run blitzes at Illinois. Few worked.

Here’s hoping they spent the time thinking and working on Michigan. Now that the national championship is gone, a Big Ten championship and Rose Bowl berth would be something for which a guy like John Cooper would have been giddy.

But times have changed and so have Ohio State’s realistic goals.

And another chance at a national title just went up in smoke.

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