View Single Post
  #1 (permalink)  
Old Tue Oct 23, 2007, 09:16pm
jimpiano jimpiano is offline
Official Forum Member
 
Join Date: Mar 2007
Posts: 747
Get Ready for New Pay Scales

If this guy gets his way we are on the way to 6 hour games.
Will officials get the pay that deserves?


From Fox Sports:

To the people who run college football, its respective conferences, and the replay system throughout the sport, a very simple plea:

Starting next year, replay must be able to review anything and everything, anytime and all the time, in every game, in every situation. PERIOD.

After Friday's Louisville-Connecticut game, the need for complete and unfettered replay jurisdiction (brought to national attention the previous weekend by a string of replay controversies) has been made obvious, if not more than obvious.

If you didn't see it or read about it, here's the play that should reform replay jurisdiction/governance issues forever and ever in college football:

Louisville punted to Connecticut. The return man clearly waved his hand in the air to signal for a fair catch. The returner ran, however, after catching the ball.

Delay of game penalty, right? Wrong. The officials missed the call.

Here's where it gets better: if you're a properly-trained kick cover man, you're obviously not supposed to hit the return man if he signals for a fair catch. Don't want to give up 15 cheap yards, right? Well, that's exactly what Louisville's cover men did — they refrained from making contact, as they were coached to do.

This meant that when the Connecticut return man started running, he kept running and running ... all the way to the end zone. Louisville allowed the run to the end zone because ... well ... the runner made a fair catch signal before catching the punt.

Still following this?

Here's the whopper: for some ridiculous and unexplained reason, determining a fair catch signal on a punt isn't subject to replay review. (Just who the heck makes these arbitrary rules anyway? Hopefully, they'll be dead and gone after this season.)

Connecticut, then, got a cheap touchdown — actually, a free touchdown — while Louisville players and coaches did all the right things. In fact, the touchdown occurred BECAUSE Louisville players and coaches did all the right things. The replay setup in college football — as currently structured — presided over one of the greatest miscarriages of football justice ever seen in the sport's 138-year history.

Next year, replay must be able to review EVERYTHING at ALL TIMES. Anything less would not just be uncivilized. Anything less would be criminally unfair to all the people who play and coach college football ... and to the officials on the field who, if backed up by fairer replay review provisions, would also look better as well. — Matt Zemek


Reply With Quote