Your opinion...please

[DrMooreReferee]

NFHS rules...

Team A leads the game 24-21

Team has the ball and has just ran a running play that ends inbounds. The clock is running and the R marks the ball RFP with 2:20 left in the 4th Qtr. It is now 3rd down and 5 to go. When the R marked it ready, the downbox correctly shows 3rd down.

After the ball is marked RFP, the downbox operator gets confused and changes the downbox back to 2nd. The Referee sees this, but since there was already a good 10 seconds ran off the playclock, he does nothing.

With the playclock ran down to 5 seconds, the Linejudge comes running in and kills the clock. He states that the downbox is wrong. It is really 3rd down. The R instructs the downbox to be fixed. And then begins to think about the clock. He realizes that team A has just milked 20 seconds off the clock with no play ran. He also realizes that another 20 plus seconds are about to be ran off the clock before another snap is made. He believes that this just isn't right. So, therefore, he decides to mark the ball RFP and NOT wind the clock.

Not that it really matters, but Team A ultimately wins the ballgame. But I thought I would throw that in there.

Good decision? Bad decision?