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Sports

Bizzarely, Western Kentucky Punts On 4th-And-Goal...From 38 Yards Out

Usually teams try to score a touchdown or kick a field goal on fourth and goal. The Hilltoppers do not play that way.

There are 42 bowl games—as Mike Francesa will count for you, one-by-one, live, on the air—and with that kind of volume and 84 teams of hyped-up college-age kids in the mix, all kinds of shit is bound to go down. But it will be hard for any of the (many) remaining bowls to deliver a scenario as weird as the one that arrived in the Monday daytime bowl match-up between Western Kentucky and South Florida in the Miami Beach Bowl. It's possible that another team will punt on fourth-and-goal before the bowl season is over, of course, but it just doesn't feel terribly likely.

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After arriving at 1st-and-goal from the six, Western Kentucky launched into a series of fuck-ups that pushed their line of scrimmage back, then back again, and finally so far back that they were effectively out of field goal range. After a 15-yard penalty; a sack for a loss of seven; and then another sack for a loss of 10, they were all the way back to the 38.

So, to get rid of the damn football before it caused any more trouble for them, the Hilltoppers punted—and finally got both some sweet relief and a truly great punt. Western Kentucky's Jake Collins launched one high and with insane accuracy, deadening the ball a few yards off the goal line. (This was, incidentally, the same goal line WKU was six yards from crossing just a few plays earlier.) It was a beautiful punt. So good it almost made it impossible to remember the goof-ups that made it necessary. Almost.