on the field, which definitely contradicts what Harsin said post game. My take on that... the white hat doesn't wear the buzzer that gets activated when the booth wants to look at a play - several of the other refs do. In a typical situation, the teams get lined up for the next play and the booth buzzes and the guys with the buzzers blow their whistles and wave their arms to stop the play- so it's obvious it's a booth review.

In this case, the white hat would of been involved with other things (determining whether it was a first down with the chain gang, etc.) when the booth buzzed. Or, maybe the booth waited to see the result of the chain measurement before buzzing - either way, it wouldn't have been immediately obvious to the white hat that it was a booth review. So, he could of assumed it was a challenge and announced that when it was really a booth review.

(And as a side note - he didn't announce that the challenge was for the spot of the ball. I can't understand exactly what he said the challenge was, but it sounded more like it was rule interpretation challenge... which to me supports the idea that the booth wasn't really trying to see where the ball was when forward progress was stopped - but that they were looking at the whole process of spotting the ball... whether the ball was placed down where the line judge said it should be placed down based on where he was running in from the sideline.)

Anyway - it's really all a moot point because those saying Boise State didn't have a timeout to initiate a challenge are wrong regardless of whether they initiated the challenge or the booth did. Boise State did use a timeout, but it was re-instated to them based on the outcome of the chain measurement - so they had it to use either way.