“I’ve never seen anything like that before. It came to a certain point where coach Watts couldn’t see the field,” said Miami head coach Michael Haywood, referring to offensive coordinator Morris Watts, who was in the press box. “He couldn’t get down in time to come over to the sidelines, so I started giving him a play-by-play like I was the radio announcer, and then we just started making suggestions on what we needed to do.”
The RedHawks had the edge over the Falcons because the fog-smoke mixture was worse along the Bowling Green sideline.
Haywood said he and his staff started lining up players on offense near the slightly clearer Miami sideline, especially wide receivers Nick Harwell, Chris Givens and Armand Robinson. Miami coaches had a good view of that side of the field.
“We knew what was happening on our side,” he said. Meanwhile, the press box is in back of the Bowling Green sideline, so the Miami coaches in the press box a decent view of that side of the field.
“We put the two together,” Haywood said.
The Bowling Green coaches in the press box, on the other hand, did not have a good view of Miami’s side of the field, only their own.
One reason the view was worse on Bowling Green’s side was the placement of the cannon, near the end zone along the Falcons’ sideline.
The cannon added smoke to the fog every time it was fired, and it was fired every time the Falcons scored a touchdown — or thought they scored a touchdown.
In the third quarter, Bowling Green scored what appeared to be touchdowns on three straight plays. But the first two were reviewed and reversed. The result was three straight plays and three bursts of smoke.
The smoke, Haywood said, “came out in a big ring ... it would get in the fog and now all of a sudden you couldn’t see.
“But we ended up using it to our advantage,” he said, “because (after the touchdown) we kicked a sky kickoff over there (near the cannon), they couldn’t see the ball, it goes down, we make a tackle inside the 15-yard line.”
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