Referee Recourse: Handling Situations Like Toledo-Syracuse
By Kyle Kensing
"Just squeeze your rage into a bitter little ball and release it at an approprate time. Like that day I hit the referee with a whiskey bottle. Remember that, when daddy hit the referee?"
Above is the sage advice of one Homer Simpson from an all-time Top 10 Simpsons episode “Last Exit to Springfield”, and a sentiment I’m sure held at one time or another among most fans (in jest, of course. SaturdayBlitz.com in no way condones spectator-on-referee violence).
While a whiskey bottle attack is a decidedly inappropriate reaction to a botched call, Saturday’s Toledo-Syracuse game is proof positive that some recourse has to be in place for when officials impact a game.
Replay shows Syracuse clearly missed its PAT attempt after taking a 29-27 late over the visiting Rockets. The referees on the field were unsure, and the replay officials got it wrong. Anyone with an HD television and DVR can see that the point was missed.
UT marched down the field and got a field goal that forced overtime, where SU scored and its defense rose up to stifle the Rockets. Cynics can point to UT’s opportunities, which it certainly had. Toledo’s final drive produced 1st and Goal, from which the Rockets failed to score a go-ahead touchdown. UT also couldn’t score the necessary points in overtime.
But that’s a bogus argument when technically, UT *DID* do what it needed to in order to win. Within the 60 given minutes, Toledo scored more points, 30 to Syracuse’s 29. That makes the decision passed down today the result would stand all the more infuriating. The outcome “can’t be reversed.” But why? Burden of proof’s been met, since the missed extra point is on film for all to see.
Perhaps consistency is the method behind this particular The officials on-field got it wrong. The officials in the booth got it wrong. Now officials in an office are getting it wrong. But the initial officiating certainly wasn’t consistent, so why remain consistent now, when the wrong can finally be righted? Wins are vacated after-the-fact all the time. It happened to USC and Georgia Tech over the summer and North Carolina just last week.
Toledo is being wronged across the board. Evidence shows plainly UT is in the right, and there isn’t a damn thing that can be done about it.
Now, some may ask, “Who cares?”
Toledo’s fans care. The players care. The coaches care. The athletes from every other sport at Toledo, a school with a much smaller budget than the BCS conference members care. That’s because every win buoys the football program’s bowl aspirations, and the more wins, the better the bowl profile. Add a road win over an eight-win, bowl game-winning*, BCS conference opponent as ‘Cuse would have been and that’s a tremendous boost for UT’s bowl profile.
Bowl games mean money, and the money injected into a program via a bowl game is spread to the rest of the athletic department. So yeah, a lot of people care, and a lot more probably should.
There’s recent precedent for an official misfire and subsequent shoulder shrugging impacting the football landscape significantly. Sept. 17, 2006, Oklahoma visited Autzen Stadium and led late, 33-27. Oregon went for an onside kick that, after recovered, led to the Ducks’ go-ahead score. Like in Toledo’s case, there are those who cling to the theory the Sooners should have simply persevered, made the stop to preserve the lead. However, UO should have never had the opportunity in the first place. The loss was OU’s sole regular season defeat, and effectively kept the Sooners out of the BCS Championship game.
*The Toledo game is actually the second time recently ‘Cuse has benefited from wacky officiating late. Last December’s exciting, inaugural Pinstripe Bowl was marred when Adrian Hilburn was flagged 15 yards for excessive celebration when he saluted K-State’s fan contingency.
Of course, this penalty was a judgment call. Was the referee overzealous? In my opinion (and most rational observers’ opinions), yes. However, this boils down to opinion. There is no opinion involved in the blown calls depicted above, and the supposed failsafe of replay failed, and the nonchalant responses afterward prove there is no safety valve beyond that.
When bowl games and even national championships are at stake, that must change. Otherwise, we may start seeing outraged coaches chasing referees with whiskey bottles across fields nationwide — Mike Stoops, I’m looking at you.