Game Protest Brewing in California
 

From the Sacramento Bee newspaper website:

Vacaville Christian wins, then loses, Division VII section football title
By Bill Patterson
[email protected]

It was a tough way to lose a game.

Vacaville Christian High School football players and supporters thought the team had won its second consecutive Sac-Joaquin Section Division VII championship Friday night in the most dramatic fashion against visiting Bradshaw Christian.

With six seconds on the clock and Vacaville Christian trailing by two points, the Falcons' Drake Wiest fielded a squibbed kickoff, broke a tackle, then outraced the Pride defense to the end zone as time expired.

But after meeting for nearly three minutes, the officials ruled the touchdown was void. They told Vacaville Christian coach Chris Smith there had been an inadvertent whistle as Wiest was picking up the ball.

The Falcons got the ball at the 50, ran a pass play that was stopped at the Pride's 20-yard line and, just like that, it was the Bradshaw Christian faithful celebrating the school's 27-25 victory and the school's first section football title.

Saturday afternoon, Smith barely could contain his anger at the call.

"We won the game," Smith said. "The officials have robbed our program of a championship.

"We've reviewed our tape, parents' tapes and TV replays. We've cranked up the volume on our film, and you can't hear a whistle. It's the most egregious call I've ever seen."

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.

He said he has written to Jim Jorgensen, who oversees area football officials, and sent e-mails to section officials asking that they "make the correction and award us the title."

He said he also plans to consult the school's attorney Monday about any "options" his school might pursue.

Section assistant commissioner John Williams said it would be unprecedented for the section to reverse a game official's ruling.

"Officials make calls all the time that people don't agree with," Williams said. "I don't want it to seem that we are downplaying this, but we are not in a position to change the outcome of a game."

Jorgensen called the situation "unfortunate" but said on-field decisions cannot be reversed.

The controversial call capped what had been a remarkable final three minutes between the two Sacramento Metro Athletic League rivals.

Vacaville Christian appeared to lock the game up on a 90-yard drive, with Trevor Moheit scoring on a 22-yard run with 2:40 to play. Chandler Thorn's PAT kick gave the Falcons a 25-24 lead.

Ouch.

It's bad to have an IW. Worse in that instance. Even worse to not own up to it.

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

I suspect that someone owned up to it when the crew huddled, and the white hat decided not to reveal who it was in order to protect that person.

The official that won't own up to an IW that cost a team a championship must quit officiating immediately.

That's rght - you read that correctly. Whoever you are. Quit. And now. Unbelievable.

Perhaps there is another side to this story that isn't being quoted properly in the article.

We hope!

If the call on the field isn't reversed, the only right thing to do is to award co-champions.

On another note, a poster on another site was correct: if there was in fact an IW as R1 picked up the kicked ball, why did the crew let the play continue, and so much as a team running it back to break a tackle and 50 yards for a touchdown? It is unbelievable that these are championship quality officials.

If it is true that the whistle can't be heard on video sources, I find it difficult to believe that an IW actually happened. There are three different video sources, and not one of them picked up the IW?

Three minutes to conference? Pathetic....

Juggling - you okay? Is the cold getting to you up there? You seem extremely perturbed.

I would assume *somebody* blew a whistle, since they huddled about it. If not - that's pretty bad. Although we get assailed a lot, it is our duty as officials to be upstanding and honest - and sometimes we must admit fault no matter how hard it may be. Hopefully the official that blew the whistle will fess up - and if it is determined that no official actually blew a whistle, then that crew should be harshly punished - maybe a one year suspension.

How many times have I said, "Drop the whistle from your mouth at the snap/free kick?"

YIKES!

It's situations like in the OP that gives people good reason to hate referees. And I don't blame them one bit.

Even if it out comes out that the author is a piss-poor journalist, most people know that corrections/retractions aren't seen by all people that saw the original story. And thus officials get a bad persona.

Three cameras with no evidence of an IW?
The CC couldn't tell the coach which official had the IW.
- I think couldn't can only mean: (a) it is against policy to inform coaches who had the IW, or (b) he didn't know who had the IW.
- If either (a) or (b) is true, you bet that the coach is pissed, and rightfully so.
- Wouldn't tell the coach who had the IW is different. Still stupid, imho, though.

Also note that Jorgensen never said that the correct call was made... only that the situation is "unfortunate".

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.

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:

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:

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.

Was the ball still loose when there was an IW? If yes, there should have been a re-kick. No options for R. If they ruled the IW took place after R gained possession, they have the choice to take the ball where it was declared dead or re-kick. If they ran the next play from the 50, are they saying the squib kick was picked up at the 50? Where was it kicked from?

A couple of years ago, I would have been completely shocked if anyone on an official's forum immediately took the word of a newspaper report, over what sounds like a common sense answer to an extremely loaded question. Sadly, I'm not surprised today, so many are so quick to presume the very worst about the officials in this instance.

Granted, this sounds like a really, really bad IW incident, but what Referee, worth his salt, would throw a crew member under the bus by identifying him to an irate, justifyably or not, coach on the spot? The fact that the Referee chose not to point out who was the particular official who actually sounded the IW shouldn't suggest, at least to other officials, that the crew was unsure that a whistle was inadvertently blown.

For those of you have yet to experience an irate coach not listening to what he's been told and then screwing up the retelling of what he should have heard to match what he concluded before anyone told him anything, you shouldn't have to wait very long for the next opportunity.

I think that's what we're all aghast about.

Doesn't mean it didn't happen that way. Doesn't mean it did.

If there was no IW, they'd have had to let the touchdown stand, though, wouldn't they?

Agreed, we don't know the whole circumstance, and likely never will.

I'd like to believe the best about my brothers in stripes. But I don't know what to think about this. And if I can't trust the Sacramento Bee, I don't know what I can trust. :)