Mississippi HS Game Protest Upheld

[TXMike]

MHSAA did right thing on protest | hattiesburgamerican.com | Hattiesburg American

MHSAA did right thing on protest
By Stan Caldwell • November 20, 2008
THERE ARE A LOT of sports fans across the state who believe the Mississippi High School Activities Association is a soulless bureaucracy and that executive director Ennis Proctor is little more than a greedy politician.


Having become acquainted with the man over the years, I think Proctor gets a bum rap in a lot of ways, but there is no question that the MHSAA is a bureaucracy and Proctor is a very political animal.

Nothing inherently wrong with that.

So it was to the surprise of the association's critics when it did the right and fair thing and upheld the protest of Walnut High School over the controversial ending to its Class 2A playoff game this past Friday at Leland.

Here's the back story.

Walnut was leading 21-18 with seconds remaining in the second-round game, but Leland had the ball inside Wildcat territory driving for a score.

On the final play of the game, the Cubs' quarterback scrambled around, turned upfield, then pitched the ball to what he thought (hoped) was a trailing back. This back picked the ball up off the ground and ran it in for an apparent touchdown.

Refs blew it
One problem. There was a penalty flag back at the spot of the pitch, which was ruled to have been a forward lateral, and thus an illegal forward pass, since it was made some 18 yards beyond the line of scrimmage.

This is where the game officials blew the call. They gave Walnut the choice of declining the penalty, which it wasn't going to do since the play resulted in a touchdown, or accepting the penalty and giving Leland an untimed play.

The Cubs threw a touchdown pass on that play and left the field with what they thought was a 24-21 victory.

The problem, of course, was that the referees erred when they gave Leland another play after time had expired.

Call reversed
National federation rules state that in such a case, the play - the touchdown on the forward lateral - should be disallowed and since time had expired, the game was over at that point.

Leland should never have been given an untimed play in that situation, and that was the argument Walnut coaches successfully made to the MHSAA's Executive Committee, which voted 10-1 with one abstention, to uphold the protest.

Naturally, the Leland coaches expressed their disappointment, arguing that the decision of the game officials should be final.

But when those officials make a mistake so obvious - and one that is so readily correctable - then it is incumbent upon the association to do the right thing.

This begs the question of how supposedly experienced referees could have blown such a critical call because they didn't know the rules. It raises a rather ugly question of just how competent some of these officials really are.

I genuinely hate this for the Leland kids who had their supposed victory taken away long after the fact.

But fair is fair, and in this case the right decision was made.