The latest on Yahoo! news is that the replay official is now getting death threats. I recall this also happening in the Ohio State BCS game a couple of years ago...so I won't make any generalizations about Oakies ;-) but in all seriousness, how out of hand has society become when people get this aggitated about a game? I have no problem with the conference giving a suspension for a badly called game, but for Boren to inflame the situation with a charged letter liek this eems to be littel more than public grandstanding.

I always think back to something an older offical told me when the topic of officials deciding games came up. Basic gist was that "The two teams had all game to score or play better defense. To blame an official for one or two blown calls out of an entire game is nothing short of dodging the team responsibility for not taking care of buisness early on in the game."

My take...FWIW...
 

I'm not a football official, but I am definitely sympathetic to officials in all sports. As long as games are officiated by humans, mistakes will be made. As officials, we should strive to do two things:

a) Minimize the mistakes we make by studying the rules and mechanics of the games we officiate and try to get in the best possible position during the contest to see and rule on the playing action.

b) Hope that the mistakes or errors we make are not magnified by the game situation.

The officials in the Oklahoma-Oregon game most likely accomplished part A, or they wouldn't be there in the first place. Obviously, they failed part B.

Does anyone believe that there would have been the same repercussions had this same play happened on a kickoff in the middle of the second quarter as opposed to with less than a minute to play? I'm sure the officials would have been chastised in their film review session, but it would have been behind closed doors and the only people involved would be the officiating crew and their supervisor(s).

Because of the game situation, I'm sure the PAC-10 felt the need to make some type of public statement and reprimand to preserve the credibility of its officiating crews. Coaches and fans often complain that officials are not accountable for their actions or mistakes on the field or court. We, of course, know different, but in this high profile situation, the conference felt the need to go public and I can see their reasoning.


On our local news sports section last night, the sportscaster started to play the clip of Boren's press conference and his rant about the game. After a few seconds, the camera panned out to show the sportscaster sitting at the desk sipping coffee and thumbing through USA Today while Boren's rant continued to play on the monitor in the background...absolutley hilarious...even my wife who couldn't care less about sports started laughing!
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I'll second the second!

What does the article mean when it says the recovery by OU was not reviewable? Specifically, why not? Seems rather clear on replay to me.

And No, I'm not a fanboy - I'm a Longhorn. I wanted them to lose, but not this way.

I do think it sucks that the on-field crew is being suspended for a week. I don't believe they deserved it (we all make mistakes - no game is officiated perfectly), and I don't believe it serves any true purpose in motivating them not to make mistakes in the future (which, supposedly, would the intent of punishment such as this) - I'm sure they are already motivated to not make mistakes.

However, I think it's a crime that the replay official has not been suspended for at least the season. This is CLEARLY an egregious error and it was his sole responsibility to fix it. He had the same angles the rest of us did, and it was a rather obvious mistake. This man should not work again. I don't want to say the mistake was intentional or biased, but I can't help but wonder if the policy of using local ex-officials as replay officials, instead of ponying up the bucks to have a replay official as part of a crew, is partly to blame here.

I haven't seen any replays of a camera that was position on the 45 yard line. All the camera views I seen were from an angle. If you've been officiating long enough, you know that making calls depends on the perfect view. The ball APPEARED to be less than 10 yards when it was touched, but we can't use what it APPEARED to be because the angle the camera was at is what gave it that appearance. We must have absolute facts. As far as the recovery of the ball, someone mentioned there was a replay that showed Oregon #15 falling on the ball while he was down. The recovery of the ball by OU #23 was after the ball became dead. In my opinion the replay official should have said there wasn't sufficient effidence to overturn the call. But because they said the ball had touched OU first is what set these wheels turning.

You're right that there is no great angle on the touch ... except for the overhead angle where you can watch the player make the touch, and see the 45 yardline clear as day to his right.

Regarding the recovery, there were ample reviews (both on TV at the time of this happening, and available all over the place in extreme retrospect) that showed the ball never in possession until after the linesman was waving his arms. At WORST, this should have been IW. I think it's readily apparent that the only Oregon player whose hands touched the ball was the guy who touched it 4-5 yards after it was kicked. It was never even remotely near an Oregon player's possession. Never.

I think the whole fiasco could have been prevented if they would have just flagged the 2 players on the top of the screen for being offside. :D

Tough Situation
 

Do you think that in this case replay hurt the situation? In previous times, they would say that the refs missed the call, grouse about it for a few days and then move on. With replay, the game now has to be perfectly called.

Regarding replay, I haven't yet seen a good explanation of what is reviewable and what IS NOT reviewable. And, I haven't seen video of the plays, so I'm unable to comment on the calls.

It seems that on the free kick call, the officials on the kicking lines should have seen something (although it's tough to see on onside kicks). On the PI call, the crew may miss a tipped pass, that's life. So, the finality of the calls lay on the doorstep of the replay official and again I'm not sure what was or wasn't reviewable.

Anyone know where to find video on the plays? Crew listing?

I'm last to criticize as I make my own share of mistakes on the field!

Replay official speaks
 

In his own words.

http://www.oregonlive.com/sports/ore...l=7&thispage=1

Quote:

Originally Posted by Texas Aggie I don't have a problem with the suspensions, but I do with if they are going to do that, conferences should be more proactive in having press conferences announcing in the other 99.9% of cases when they are correct. Boren's an idiot. Always has been; always will be.

The only problem I have is this?

Why suspend the officiating crew? They did their job. They made the calls (even though incorrect), however, both calls were reviewed by the Instant replay Crew where the calls on the field could have been reversed and there would not have been any suspensions.

Therefore, I agree with suspending the Instant replay officials but why the on Field officials.

Pete Booth

Wow! Wait a cotton pickin minute. If the play to which you refer is the Miami OSU championship game of 2002 then I must object. The call which I believe you refer to went against Miami and therefore the threats were from Miami fans. OSU should not even have been mentioned in your post.

The reason I point that out is that our star running back from that team got sentenced to a 7.5 year stretch in the pokey and the reputation of THE Ohio State Univ. has enough problems to deal with without you piling on!

Having read the explanation of the replay official I have no problem with his call.

However.....

Not much has been said of the PAC 10 insisting that their officials work the games hosted by PAC 10 teams against non-conference opponents. Almost every other conference has a rule that the traveling team provides the officials. I'm not sure if it would have made a difference in this case but I think it makes the PAC 10 look bad to the regular fans.

I was part of that basketball forum last June ! I'm only a fanboy when it comes to MY SPURS ! Spurs should have went 82-0 last year if we could get some decent calls ! As bad as some Spurs fans are......Mav fans took it over the top! Talk about whiners !!!!! Karma is a ***** ! Sorry to go off topic....now back to the football forum......

>>Almost every other conference has a rule that the traveling team provides the officials.<<

I don't think any conference has this rule, its just that game contracts usually provide for this. Its an agreement between the schools and has been in place since the NCAA outlawed split crews.

I think the NCAA just needs to step in again and say that in non-conference games, officials are provided by a third party conference. I don't think it makes any difference, but if they are going to play this game, at least make the appearences that everything is "neutral."

Its also interesting to see commentators note that there should have been a split crew.

I'd like to see just one organization for officials. Put them all in one NCAA organization instead of splitting folks up into conferences.