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Originally Posted by Dakota
I know a number of the regulars here call college ball...
Any comments on the officiating crew for the Oregon / Oklahoma football game being suspended for officiating mistakes that supposedly determined the outcome of the game?
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This is what I find disgusting:
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University of Oklahoma President David Boren sent a letter to Big 12 Commissioner Kevin Weiberg asking him to push for the Sooners' game against Oregon to be eliminated from the record books and having the Pac-10 officials involved in the game suspended for the remainder of the season."
The president of a major university is supposed to be an educational and administrative leader, not an AD. IMO, David Boren is a pathetic figure.
Ask any Michigan fan and they still remember the hosing the Wolverines received from the officials at the Alamo Bowl last year. OK - fans are supposed to make noise like that. But no way would the University of Michigan president ever stoop to publicly criticizing officials and making demands as Boren did.
OK, that’s out of the way.
Should officials be punished for mistakes? Obviously not for judgment calls. But if you have a rules violation, and you have an opportunity to correct it – and you fail to do so, then the officials must be accountable.
In our game, assume the ball is hit over 2B and F6 moves towards 2B and collides with R1 going to 3B. BU calls interference and rules R1 out, inning over. O’Coach claims F6 had no play on the ball (true) and the call s/b obstruction (also true). BU and PU discuss the call; PU explains the rules and interpretations, but BU is not going to give in – he wants interference and is not going to change his call.
Bottom of the 7
th, R1 was winning run and she was going to score easily on the single. You would probably send her home on the obstruction. But instead she is taken off the base and the inning is over. Visiting team scores in the 8
th inning; wins the game and moves into the championship game.
Are we, as umpires going to sit here and piously claim it was not the umpire’s fault the team lost. It was because they didn’t hit enough, or score enough, or had too many errors, or served up too many "fat" pitches, etc. Are not most of you going to say, "I’ll never work with that umpire again!" Don’t you want it brought to the attention of the assignor so that umpire does not get high-level tournament games again?
We don’t live in the fishbowl that officials on nationally televised college or pro game do, nor do our mistakes have the same magnitude as theirs. But we also don’t have the money and/or prestige they have.
I hate to hear fans and the ESPN idiots saying it was the official’s fault the game was lost, for it is never really true. But the officials must be accountable for their mistakes.
WMB