Twice in three weeks, NCAA football officiating crews for the Southeastern Conference have come under fire for making questionable calls that altered the outcome of the game. To recap, three weeks ago LSU won a thriller over Georgia by scoring in the waning seconds of the game. Georgia took the lead with an incredible touchdown catch, and the players celebrated appropriately. Georgia receiver A.J. Green, the player who scored the go-ahead touchdown, was inexplicably flagged for excessive celebration, a penalty that gave LSU excellent field position on the ensuing kickoff. LSU went on to score the winning touchdown with a 30 yard touchdown run by Charles Scott, leaving Georgia stunned, and leading to a media field day, with almost every sports media outlet criticizing the poor officiating.
Just a week ago, the same SEC officiating crew made a litany of other questionable calls at crucial moments, contributing to Florida’s comeback win over Arkansas. The SEC crew responsible for making the costly calls in the two games was suspended as a result of their poor officiating, a small victory for the teams affected.
Bad officiating was the story of game 4 of the American League Championship Series in MLB as well. Umpire Tim McClelland made what has been dubbed, the “worst call of all time”. The play occurred with one out in the top of the 5th inning. A New York Yankees player was caught in a rundown while trying to score from third base, the runner on second base and the runner on third base both met at third base, the catcher ran to third and tagged both of the runners out, but only the runner originally on third was called out. Instant replay revealed that both players were tagged out, and that the call was not even close. The player from second base had been tagged out seconds before he touched third base, but he was called safe.
These recent officiating debacles have brought a problem in sports to light, the inconsistencies of the human element in officiating. You see it every day in sports, penalties that go un-flagged, or inexplicable penalties called by trigger happy referees. More often than not a mistake by a referee will go unmentioned because it did not contribute to the outcome of the game, and because it is simply a part of all sports that fans have had to live with forever.
In this day and age it should not be necessary to have to live with the discrepancies of the human element in sports officiating, professional tennis has made strides by employing an automated system to determine whether a ball is in bounds or not, so other sports should look into more accurate and consistent ways of judging a game as well. Instant replay certainly is a useful tool, but many argue that reviewing every questionable play would make a game that is too long, even longer.
At this point in time technology has not yielded a way to officiate a football game without adding substantial amounts of time to it, but there are things that can be done to improve the game immediately. Amending the rule that says certain plays cannot be reviewed and issuing college coaches the right to challenge plays, a right that NFL coaches have, would be a start. Also applying a majority vote rule in which a majority of referees must agree with a call would help lighten the gray area between penalty and no penalty. Something has to be done because the fact is people make mistakes, mistakes that I as a Georgia football fan have suffered disappointed over in recent weeks.
Changes in officiating methods would not only be for the sake of “fan-kind”, but also for the teams, specifically NFL and College Football teams. For College Football teams, one bad call could be the difference between going to the Sugar Bowl, a 17 million dollar reward for the respected schools, and going to the Chick-fil-a bowl, a 3.25 million dollar payoff. For NFL teams, one bad call could spell a trip to the Superbowl and the multiple millions that go along with it, or not. The point is that the sports industry is enormous and powerful, and the fate of a team, a player, and the history of sports, should not be solely in the hands of a few guys in striped shirts.
-Daniel Printz
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