It was a bad play. It was a great piece. It was a smart decision. It was a stupid decision. It was a crucial game that led to a victory. It was a potentially demoralizing play that could have resulted in a loss. It was a lucky decision by the officials. It was a bad decision by the officials. It was a statistical impossibility that created a meaningless stat line.

It was nine seconds of a 60-minute game, but it packed a lot of implications, questions, assumptions, debates and outright bewilderment into those nine seconds.

It was quite simple really. On a third-and-8 play from the Oregon State 9-yard line with 11:42 left in the first quarter of Cal’s game against Oregon State on Saturday, Cal quarterback Fernando Mendoza threw a short pass to Jaivian Thomas, who caught the ball 3 meters behind the line of scrimmage and was stopped almost immediately. But just before he went down — and just before the officials blew the whistle to end the game — Thomas sidestepped Mendoza, who was watching the play and calling for the ball. Mendoza caught the sideline at the 15-yard line, then ran into the end zone for a touchdown and a 7-0 Cal lead with 11:33 left in the first quarter.

It worked well and catapulted Cal on its way to a 44-7 victory over the Beavers, ending the Bears’ four-game losing streak.

But was it a smart play to sideline the ball, given the negative effects a fumble on a risky ad-lib move could have caused?

Thomas was in the grip of a defender and on his way down when he made the lateral. A fumble was a distinct possibility, and that would have doomed Cal’s scoring chance and given the Beavers a lift. The final score — Cal won 44-7 — makes the game seem like a fluke, but given the bad luck Cal has had in the last four games, it could have pushed the game in a completely different direction.

Asked about the game afterward, head coach Justin Wilcox was full of guts:

“That’s exactly how we practice it,” he said.

After the laughing ended, Wilcox was asked if Thomas’ sideline was a good play or something he should have avoided.

“OK, I didn’t plan that,” he admitted before pausing for a long time to formulate a response. “Here’s the deal: We don’t train this. Football players have to play football and from time to time those things happen. I could go into story after story after story about a guy making a decision to make a play and in those moments you have to be right, the player has to be right.”

In this case, the player was right. However, Wilcox hinted that if the play hadn’t worked out, Thomas — and possibly Mendoza as well — would have been tongue-tied when they returned to the sideline.

And what about the officials’ decision to let the play continue long enough for Thomas to make the sideline. He was clearly going nowhere when he was tackled and pushed back, and a whistle could have ended the game right there. No whistle and the result of a memorable game.

However, you would never be able to decipher what happened based on the stats around the game.

First, Mendoza was credited with a touchdown pass AND a receiving touchdown.

But wait, it gets better.

Mendoza was credited with a 15-yard pass and a 15-yard receiving touchdown, even though the game started at the 9-yard line.

Wait, there are more.

In the official statistics, Mendoza was credited with a 15-yard touchdown reception, but not an official reception. So in the final stat of the game, Mendoza had 0 receptions, but scored a touchdown on the end of a pass play.

For his Cal career, Mendoza now has no receptions, but has one receiving touchdown and 15 receiving yards.

“As long as I’m in the end zone, I’m excited,” Mendoza said.