Gonzaga/Tenn
 

Very disappointed in Jay Bilas, who is normally pretty good, today for his lack of understanding of the BI rule.

Why is the assumption that the official is incorrect instead of people presuming that the TV announcers are wrong?

The play:
Gonzaga attempts a field goal in the final seconds of the 2nd half. The ball is in the imaginary cylinder above the ring, but not touching the basket. A Tenn. player puts his hand up through the basket from below. He touches the net and makes slight contact the ring. He comes close to, but doesn't not touch the ball. The ball hit the backboard and passed over the ring, and then continued away on the other side of the goal.

The announcers declared that this was absolutely illegal. :(

Update: The SportsCenter guys just said that it should have been an "automatic goaltending." :(

Personally, I would like to see one extra "teammate" added to the crew covering sports games. I know that a few of the football bowl games had a "rules interpreter" on the crew covering the games for the networks.

It would be nice to have another referee at the event in the background. Anytime there was a controversial play -- such as this one (I was watching as well) -- the executive producer could quickly consult the referee who could provide feedback directly to the commentators. With the size of the crews that they take to these games -- cameramen, producers, announcers, etc. it would seem that they could improve the quality of the broadcast by having the referee on board at a very low cost. I would also add one to the "technical staff" in the ESPN Studios that would prevent a repeat of the error over and over on Sportscenter for the next 23 hours.

AMEN! It's even worse at the local level when HS games are on TV.

I saw the play last night. I, also, thought the same of Bilas. He kept referring to the play as GT, and he insisted on repeating that several times with a replay. AND, he never once referred to BI. Yet, he looked good on camera. A good learning situation went up in smoke.

Basketball
NCAA
Rule 4: Definitions
Section 5: Basket Interference - Article 2c
Basket interference occurs when a player [a thru d]:

c. Reaches through the basket from below and touches the ball before it enters the cylinder.

Along these same lines, Jeff Van Gundy was wrong about a call in the Duke/Davidson game last night. (In case anyone missed it, the ESPN NBA crew did the Duke game and the college crew did the NBA game last night)

A Duke player took a charge and was very close to being under the basket. Van Gundy said that he couldn't take the charge because he was under the basket and that he didn't beat the offensive player to the spot. I slowed it down and he had LGP before the Davidson player left the floor. It was very close but I thought it was a PC foul.

Heck
 

They could just have one of the ESPN technical staff pump a question into this forum, or call their dad who is a referee.

If they want someone for on screen exposure, the "Expert Village" guy already is known to countless thousands. :eek:

Saw that play and just chalked it up to announcing as usual.

The forum would be too slow. Even if they did not get the answer in absolute real time (sometimes, a stats guy has to dig up a stat for one of the announcers), they could get the answer within a minute or so.

I don't think we need the on screen exposure. I am just thinking rule book exposure.

There is a texting service called chacha.............just text those letters and text any question you have and within minutes you'll have the answer. We could call our service wakwak.