St. Thomas Aquinas beats Cocoa? Video shows Raiders won in controversial fashion
St. Thomas Aquinas beat Cocoa 37-36 on Friday night, but many who attended the Florida high school football game left the Fort Lauderdale field in disbelief.
Update: Cocoa football loses appeal
Cocoa looked to have the game in hand with 1:28 remaining, up 36-34 with the ball on its own 42, first-and-10 against the No. 18 team in the national SBLive/Sports Illustrated Power 25.
Then things got weird.
Watch the NFHS video above to see one of the longest, strangest 88 seconds you'll ever see in high school sports (88 seconds in this case last longer than 13 minutes).
Here's the play-by-play as we see it:
1:28 1st down Cocoa - Kneel back to the Cocoa 38, STA calls timeout despite scoreboard indicating it has 0 remaining, Cocoa sideline called for unsportsmanlike conduct, ball moved back to the Cocoa 23.
1:27 2nd down Cocoa - Cocoa QB Brady Hart takes a few steps back and waits for the rush, then takes a knee at 1:21 at the 19, but the STA defense hits him after the kneel-down. A penalty on STA appears to be a personal foul, but is never signaled by the referee, and the ball is moved up to the 34. There's confusion on the sideline about whether it's an automatic first down, but it's still 3rd down. The chain crew on the sidelines moved the down marker from 1 to 3 to 1 and finally back to 3.
(The clock should start here on the ref’s ready-for-play command, but it remains stopped.)
1:21 3rd down Cocoa - Kneel back to 32-yard line
0:32 4th down Cocoa - Timeout Cocoa
0:32 4th down Cocoa - Cocoa punts, STA returns the ball to the Cocoa 37-yard line, and a flag is thrown that appears to be for too many men on the field, but it's waved off.
0:22 1st down STA - Pass to Cocoa 2-yard line
0:13 1st down STA - Spike
0:13 2nd down STA - Incomplete pass
0:09 3rd down STA - 19-yard field goal good
Final score - St. Thomas Aquinas 37, Cocoa 36.
Cocoa head football coach Ryan Schneider took to social media Saturday morning to make it clear his team's beef with the game's outcome had nothing to do with St. Thomas Aquinas and everything to do with the officiating:
(Feature photo by Matt Christopher)
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-- Mike Swanson | swanson@scorebooklive | @sblivesports
