Help! We Lost the Down

[Reffing Rev.]

Embarrassing moment,

XX and 10 B's 20, A is sacked at the B26, BJ has a flag for a live ball personal foul for unecessary roughness against B. Half the distance to the 13, repeat the down. Looking at my down indicator I've got 2nd down, the box has 2 on it. I announce 2nd down and just before I chop it in, HL comes in with a question. Was it live ball or dead ball? We say live ball so he says we should be repeating 1st down. I said, "that was 2nd down, so we're repeating 2nd down." He disagrees, so check with U, he's got 2nd down, BJ has 2nd down and LJ has 1st down. Then of course, the chain crew thought a personal foul on the defense was an automatic first down.

What would you do?

I went with my gut and the majority, 2nd down. A got a first down on the next play and made the decision moot. Just watched the video, and sure enough it should have been 1st down. Most everyone, including the announcer and coaching staff (whose headsets got recorded into the video) assumed it was a dead ball foul, hence the 2nd down, so no one had a disagreement. I just hate being wrong.