[OverAndBack]

Originally Posted by SC Ump

If no one owns up to it, how is it an IW?

If one of the five whistles sounded through breath coming from the lungs and mouth of the referee, the umpire, the line judge, the linesman or the back judge, it's an IW. Whether someone owns up to it or not. It's not like you can pretend it didn't happen and boom! it just didn't happen, like a season of Dallas.

Did one of the officials just think they heard one? If so, how could they be sure it was an official and not something on the sideline? I'm sure there's more to the story. Interesting.

It's very possible, indeed probable, that we don't have the entire story.

However, we do have this, though it's not from the crew chief directly:

Smith said crew chief Rick Stannard couldn't tell him which member of his five-man officiating crew made the mistake.

"No one would take ownership of blowing the whistle," Smith said.

Which is not the same as the crew chief saying to his guys, "Did you blow your whistle? Did you blow your whistle? Did you blow your whistle? Did you blow your whistle? Did *I* blow my whistle?" and then saying to the coach, "There was no inadvertent whistle." Because if there's no IW, the touchdown stands.

We do also have this, which leads me to believe there was an IW:

They told Vacaville Christian coach Chris Smith there had been an inadvertent whistle as Wiest was picking up the ball.

So there was an IW. It's not a question of whether there was or not, if we believe that Chris Smith is relaying what he was told accurately (someone in a supervisory position should say something about this whole mess, it seems to me).

If you're any kind of an official at all, you know that IWs happen. Chances are they've happened to all of us (or, more properly, we've all done it - they're not things that happen to us, they're things we do).

Also if you're any kind of official at all, your heart goes out to someone who blows an IW in a critical situation like this, or who kicks a crucial call because we've all been there (except for one or two supermen on this board who work 125 games a season and never make a bad call).

So we can all emphathize. Holy cow, man, I feel for you and I know that nobody on Earth feels worse about it than you do.

But IF you did it, you gotta own up to it. We can put an arm around your shoulder and say "You'll be a better official for this" and "Your brothers are here with you, because right now you sure as hell don't have any other friends here," but if you're not going to own up to it, that's just wrong. And covering it up is just wrong, if that's what's going on. A conspiracy doesn't help anybody but the official who blew the whistle. And while that hurts like hell, you can get past it.

I don't know how you could get past not admitting you did it or how you could get past covering it up. IF that's what happened here, and that's strictly deducing what might have happened. As mentioned, we don't appear to know the whole story.

EDIT: Yes, it is entirely possible that the reporter got it wrong. We don't know. My point is - keep the damn whistle out of your mouth, especially on kicks. And IF you do blow an IW, own up to it.