The solution seems simple enough. The referees completely botched the end of the Miami-Duke game, so why not fix it?

The Hurricanes’ eight-lateral kickoff return for a game-winning touchdown Saturday night should’ve ended as a three-lateral, tackled-at-the-26-yard-line footnote to the Blue Devils’ seventh victory on the season.

Miami 30-27 should have been Duke 27-24. The ACC admits it. Miami acknowledges it. The refs who blew it will spend two weeks suspended thinking about it.

So why not just have the ACC reverse the decision and declare Duke the winner? Why not serve as a replay for the replay, a higher appellate court, if you will?

The replay folks took nine minutes to review the play yet still missed Duke tackling Miami’s Mark Walton, not to mention a block in the back, and the Canes’ Rashawn Scott running on the field – carrying his helmet no less – while the play was still going on. Any of those would have negated the touchdown.

View photos Replay showed Miami's Mark Walton was down before he lateralled the football. More

“The last play of the game was not handled appropriately,” ACC commissioner John Swofford said.

Of course, Swofford's office on Monday named Miami's Corn Elder, who scored the winning touchdown, its specialist of the week. Why not just give it to replay official Andrew Panucci?

So get it right; this was the last play of the game after all. And besides, this is college sports, where the NCAA would gladly vacate Miami’s victory if it found out a player went trick or treating at a booster’s house and got an extra Kit Kat.

Why not now?

Because simple is sometimes stupid, and stupid is what you call opening Pandora’s box.

At some point a game must end, and after-the-fact reviews are fine to sort out the mistakes, offer apologies and condolences, and provide a semblance of transparency and accountability. It isn’t for rewriting the results.

If college football ever went down the path of having a conference office, or the NCAA itself, offer reviews and reversals of game results then nothing would ever end. Ever. There would be litigation. There would be court-ordered stays. There would be endless howling. There would be chaos in a sport with too many moving parts for a game to be called to perfection.

Miami's Dallas Crawford (25) returns a kickoff. (AP Photo/Rob Brown) More

The basic issue, however, is that no single play determines a 60-minute football game. None.

This is true even when there is a decisive final play that results in a game-winning score. It may seem like Miami’s eight-lateral touchdown – or Duke’s tackle after three laterals – was a deciding factor, but there were 159 offensive plays run in the game and each one of them played some role in getting to that final kickoff.

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