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CFL admits officiating was bad. It will be better
THE 92ND GREY CUP GAME
Steve Milton
The Hamilton Spectator



Let's come clean, right off the top. Everyone, even this corner -- OK, OK, especially this corner -- makes plenty of mistakes.

That admitted, those mistakes rarely cost a team a first down, a win, or even a berth in the Grey Cup game.

So it was certainly encouraging to hear the CFL commissioner confirm yesterday that the league's No. 1 priority is improving its officiating "top to bottom."

A thousand amens to that.

And, kudos to Tom Wright, the commish, and George Black, his lieutenant in charge of striped jerseys, for their forthrightness on the issue.

Yes, as both executives emphasized yesterday, the league's officials are honest, hard-working, correct far more often than not. And eager to become better at their vocation.

But no, as both have also conceded, this was not a good year for CFL officials.

Although they don't put it this way, the rest of us do: too many superfluous flags in some games, badly blown calls in others, no game flow in still others, and little consistency from quarter to quarter let alone week to week.

No grey area on this criticism, it was right there in Black and Wright.

So, the league will be investing heavily in upgrading its officiating system, although it will stop short of hiring full-time professional officials. That would be impractical. Many of the men who currently work the games -- and lots of them are pretty good and will get better with better training support -- are successful professionals in real life, and "we wouldn't want to lose them," according to Wright. There is no way the CFL could compensate them enough for leaving their weekday jobs for a weekend one.

Wright has appointed B.C. Lions president Bobby Ackles to head up a committee which will recommend to the CFL board ways of improving officiating. And they'll do it soon.

Among those sitting on the committee will be well-regarded referee Glenn Johnson of Winnipeg, Ticats' president Dave Sauve, Saskatchewan GM Roy Shivers -- whose team was victimized by a questionable ball placement last weekend -- and Burlington's Chris Schultz, a TSN commentator who played in both the CFL and NFL. Now that's progress, and you don't see it in many pro sports: a players' guy actually having some pull.

The impending implementation of video replay will be a component of the upgrade and so, likely, will several programs suggested by Black.

"It will be three-tier support," Black told The Spec. "One step is large-scale recruitment in local associations, because we need to grow the game and grow the officiating at the grassroots level. That gives us a bigger base of the pyramid. Which should make the top, which we consider ourselves, better.

"The second thing is training. We need to increase the amount of training, provide the officials with digital tape, that they can look at and reflect upon during the week.

"The third thing is the continuous development theme. I believe that each and every one of them goes out and tries to be the best that he can be. So we'll support them with review sessions and other programs."

A "primary prospects program" will target a few university officials across the country as CFL material, "and we can do a little more coaching and nurturing with these officials.

"We would want age-appropriate (somewhere in their 30s) people, so we can get 10 to 20 years of service out of them. We'd like to scout them, work with them, include them in our preseason meetings and perhaps have them do a couple of exhibition games. Then monitor their progress and provide film analysis and support during the college season, so that we can see them grow faster."

Black is also pushing a fast-track tier for former university and CFL players who'd like to get into officiating, similar to what the NHL instituted a few years ago.

Former Ticat Paul Bennett, a Hall of Fame safety, wanted to get into officiating after his playing days, but Black recalls that his local (Winnipeg) association absurdly insisted he'd have to start by handling the youngest minor-league games and slowly working his way. He had neither the time nor the inclination for that.

"We need those people who have an innate sense of the game, and an intuition and experience with the game. We can teach them the rules and techniques," Black says.

"If they're interested in coming into officiating I'd love to develop a training program, and then accelerate them into the game. It will help the local programs because it gives them more top quality people.

"We've got to get away from doing the same-old, same-old and start thinking outside the box."

What a refreshing concept. But perhaps a first step should be one that's inside the box, and that doesn't cost any money.

Start by clearly defining -- calling with metronomic consistency -- pass interference and no-yards infractions. Those are the areas which evoke the most frequent, most obvious and angriest complaints.

And in a league which is all about passing and kicking, that is madness.