Inept referees?!

[Collier11]

The one thing that really gets to the heart of the integrity of college football is the slew of bad referees that there are these days. ON top of that, its one thing to miss a call, but the large number of Replay Officials who are missing replay calls is extremely disturbing! There have been atleast 10 high profile cases this year in addition to the travesty from last year in Eugene where there were not 1 but 3 obvious and egregious missed calls!

I guess my concern is this, why are conferences so hush hush about this stuff, it is obvious that game officials are inept on a whole new level and it would seem that a huge reform needs to take place, when I say this I mean specifically:
1: Reasess all referees and the incompetence of their missed calls
2: Completely reform replay to the NFL system or get rid of it. Put the responsibility on the head referee and not some 3rd party in the booth

I realize that most of these guys in CFB have other jobs and there is an extreme amount of stress and criticism, but the calls have gone from "just missed calls" which happens to EXTREME levels of incompetence. Am I off base here, why doesnt CFB pay a little more and require these officials to be full time, is this not possible? If im wrong, please tell me where?

[Harry Beanbag]

Apparently you missed the memo. If the Sooners give up more than 100 yards and/or 5 points they deserve to lose no matter what happens. Blaming the officials for making game changing calls incorrectly that may have impacted the outcome of the game is wrong and you should be flogged for even suggesting it.


p.s. You suck as a Sooner fan.

[Collier11]

Apparently you missed the memo. If the Sooners give up more than 100 yards and/or 5 points they deserve to lose no matter what happens. Blaming the officials for making game changing calls incorrectly that may have impacted the outcome of the game is wrong and you should be flogged for even suggesting it.


p.s. You suck as a Sooner fan.


you always see through me!!! :O

[mdward4]

I agree totally, Im sure the NCAA will play the financial card, but thats BS (we all know how deep those pockets run), at least it should be limited to games where a top 25 team is playing. Im sick and effing tired of the refs being a factor in OUr games!!

[stoops the eternal pimp]

I think officials have made instant replay such a crutch that it seems they are relying on it to fix their mistakes.

I think doing away with "conference" officials would be a big help. Pool all the officials together and send them to do a big 12 game one week and a pac 10 the next.

[Frozen Sooner]

I'm willing to bet that NCAA referees perform their jobs with a higher degree of accuracy than most of the people who post here.

We just don't have several million people watching us for mistakes.

[King Crimson]

I'm willing to bet that NCAA referees perform their jobs with a higher degree of accuracy than most of the people who post here.

We just don't have several million people watching us for mistakes.

the variable is actually how much does accuracy determine outcome.....and what is the internal variance for determining accuracy

we lost, i can live with it. i don't like it. at no point thus far did i think we were the best team in the country. could we beat anyone, sure.

we gotta beat OSU, and we better come to play because they will.

[Frozen Sooner]

the variable is actually how much does accuracy determine outcome.....and what is the internal variance for determining accuracy

we lost, i can live with it. i don't like it. at no point thus far did i think we were the best team in the country. could we beat anyone, sure.

we gotta beat OSU, and we better come to play because they will.

There is also the fact that people who are in fact incompetent to judge referees through an incomplete or incorrect understanding of the actual rule involved are sometimes the ones judging.

Case in point: Manny's non-catch in the endzone last Saturday. I know you saw Lefty and BR's response to my question about it.

[1stTimeCaller]

I'm willing to bet that NCAA referees perform their jobs with a higher degree of accuracy than most of the people who post here.

We just don't have several million people watching us for mistakes.

That may be true but in SF.com style let me take an extreme example and use it as the norm.

Is there anyone at your credit union that has ever messed up as badly as the Oregon crew did against us on the onside kick? What if one of your employees makes a $5,000 error in favor of the credit union and the customer comes in to dispute the error and you don't correct it. What's your customer supposed to think? What if they have no recourse as you're the final word?

I think the big errors are getting worse and more common. It could be because we now have 50 camera angles to look at but that should help the replay official not hinder them.

It could be that the officials are as good as they have ever been but their mistakes are magnified in today's world.

There is no excuse for not getting the right call from the replay official.

[Leroy Lizard]

I agree totally, Im sure the NCAA will play the financial card, but thats BS (we all know how deep those pockets run), at least it should be limited to games where a top 25 team is playing.

You want the NCAA to guarantee correct officiating for Top-25 teams, but no one else? Sheez, how would that look?

The increase in bad officiating is largely due to far more tv coverage. I remember Penn State being given the benefit on two horrible calls in two separate games. That was back in the 1980s.

Here is one of them. The Penn State player's foot is well out-of-bounds, yet both refs gave him the catch.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=NOePPSdNtqE

I couldn't find the one when Penn State was playing Bama, but IIRC a Bama player clearly caught a TD pass and the refs ruled him out of bounds.

Same crew, I believe.

[1890MilesToNorman]

I absolutely hate that I am about to say this but I think the network announcers get it right on replays the vast majority of the time. Did I just say that? Damn

They are paid a lot better than the officials and that is sad in itself.

[Frozen Sooner]

That may be true but in SF.com style let me take an extreme example and use it as the norm.

Is there anyone at your credit union that has ever messed up as badly as the Oregon crew did against us on the onside kick? What if one of your employees makes a $5,000 error in favor of the credit union and the customer comes in to dispute the error and you don't correct it. What's your customer supposed to think? What if they have no recourse as you're the final word?

I think the big errors are getting worse and more common. It could be because we now have 50 camera angles to look at but that should help the replay official not hinder them.

It could be that the officials are as good as they have ever been but their mistakes are magnified in today's world.

There is no excuse for not getting the right call from the replay official.

Why don't I take your extreme example and turn it into something that actually happens much more frequently:

Someone comes in to the credit union with several hundred dollars in overdraft fees and says that there was a mistake on their account and that we're trying to screw them.

We research the account, and we determine that every overdraft fee was correct.

The person says "That has to be wrong. I actually had money in my account."

We say "OK, are we missing a deposit?"

"No, but I still had checks in my checkbook."

That right there is an example of someone with a misunderstanding of how things work attempting to judge the performance of people who DO know how things work. The vast majority of the time I see people bitch about calls, that's what's going on.

Look, I'm not saying that bad calls never happen. They do, and sometimes replay doesn't correct errors the way we'd like it to-whether because of a bad angle on the camera, or that it's been determined by the NCAA that a particular play should not be reviewable, or simply because the correct call gets misinterpreted by two different people. That last is a bit easier to understand when you look at the sheer size of the NCAA rulebook and remember that they can't refer back to the thing in the timeframe they have to review a call. I mean, I'm pretty darn good at my job, but if someone asked me an obscure point on margin lending I'd probably need to break out my Reg U handbook.

[Frozen Sooner]

I absolutely hate that I am about to say this but I think the network announcers get it right on replays the vast majority of the time. Did I just say that? Damn

They are paid a lot better than the officials and that is sad in itself.

Sometimes they are, sometimes they aren't. I hear the network announcers say some pretty asinine things about the rules that simply aren't true.

[Harry Beanbag]

Why don't I take your extreme example and turn it into something that actually happens much more frequently:

Someone comes in to the credit union with several hundred dollars in overdraft fees and says that there was a mistake on their account and that we're trying to screw them.

We research the account, and we determine that every overdraft fee was correct.

The person says "That has to be wrong. I actually had money in my account."

We say "OK, are we missing a deposit?"

"No, but I still had checks in my checkbook."

That right there is an example of someone with a misunderstanding of how things work attempting to judge the performance of people who DO know how things work. The vast majority of the time I see people bitch about calls, that's what's going on.


Actually, I think you gave an analogy for the happenings inside a college football replay booth. ;)

[lexsooner]

The whole problem with the replay review is it operates, falsely, under the presumption that thorough video review of a play will ascertain the right call. Sometimes this is true, but it seems most of the time it is about as ambiguous for the reviewing official as for the refs on the field during the play. There just are not enough angles or nearness to the ball/player to make a sure call on replay. What this means is a second layer or tier of guess work, and more room for screwing it up or jobbing one team. This being the case, why muck things up further? Get rid of the replay review. Two wrongs don't make a right.

[FaninAma]

I'm willing to bet that NCAA referees perform their jobs with a higher degree of accuracy than most of the people who post here.

We just don't have several million people watching us for mistakes.

Well that's the beauty of having a job that involves your own subjective interpretation of events and rules as the final arbiter of what's allowed and what's not.

I would be willing to bet that NCAA refs have less consistency and less well-defined, objective standards by which they are judged than most people who post here.

You can only go by what the coaches say about them and it's my understanding that the coaches in both football and basketball in the Big 12 think the officiating in this league stinks.

And BTW, Jon Bible was fired from the NFL. Are we allowed to reference that fact in support of our contention that he stinks as a ref?

[Harry Beanbag]

And BTW, Jon Bible was fired from the NFL. Are we allowed to reference that fact in support of our contention that he stinks as a ref?


No. Because no matter how ****ty a referee Bible is, fans are too ignorant and incompetent to possibly have any idea what the rules of football are or what constitutes proper officiating.

Really, I'm surprised most of us knuckle-draggers are even capable of finding our way to our place of work every day in order to perform our jobs at substandard levels of accuracy anyway.

[Frozen Sooner]

And BTW, Jon Bible was fired from the NFL. Are we allowed to reference that fact in support of our contention that he stinks as a ref?

It's a curious thought that because someone was hired to perform his job at the absolute highest level of his profession then was later let go that he's somehow presumptively worse than someone who was never hired in the first place.

[Frozen Sooner]

FIA, let me ask you a question:

Has there ever been a time that a dentist's malpractice insurance has refused to pay a claim where it was later determined by a court that malpractice did, indeed occur? Or conversely, has a dentist ever invoked their agreement to settle clause in their malpractice insurance?

[Frozen Sooner]

No. Because no matter how ****ty a referee Bible is, fans are too ignorant and incompetent to possibly have any idea what the rules of football are or what constitutes proper officiating.

Really, I'm surprised most of us knuckle-draggers are even capable of finding our way to our place of work every day in order to perform our jobs at substandard levels of accuracy anyway.

Actually, what was meant was that referees actually perform to a very high standard, not that the average poster doesn't. People screw up from time to time, we generally just don't do it in front of a few million people.

My apologies if you took what I said as critical of how you perform in your job. I can easily see how you could read it that way, and that certainly was not my intent.

[ClintonSooner]

There is also the fact that people who are in fact incompetent to judge referees through an incomplete or incorrect understanding of the actual rule involved are sometimes the ones judging.

Case in point: Manny's non-catch in the endzone last Saturday. I know you saw Lefty and BR's response to my question about it.



From my understanding of your point of view, Replay officials, their calls, and the way things work around Instant Replay has to be very complicated, with only a few handfulls of the common public capable of understanding the terms, conditions, "how things work".


I say **** that! Why does it need to be complicated? The replay simply needs to be simple and accurate! Thats all people are asking for, and I happen to be one of those people. If I am so incompetent... then feel free to school me, because I really don't know how all this crap works, I just want the right calls :D

[olevetonahill]

My .02 here
The refs can screw it up on the field , Replay should nevar be screwed up .
Any and ALL plays should be subject to review or challenge !
Replay officials should be the Cream of the Cream . Know all the rules better than anyone ( including us ) If Not get rid of the shat !

[Frozen Sooner]

From my understanding of your point of view, Replay officials, their calls, and the way things work around Instant Replay has to be very complicated, with only a few handfulls of the common public capable of understanding the terms, conditions, "how things work".


I say **** that! Why does it need to be complicated? The replay simply needs to be simple and accurate! Thats all people are asking for, and I happen to be one of those people. If I am so incompetent... then feel free to school me, because I really don't know how all this crap works, I just want the right calls :D

On several occasions I've posted the exact rule out of the NCAA rulebook to show that a referee got the correct call, then had people continue to claim we got screwed and there's a conspiracy. The Adrian Peterson fumble in the 2005 OU-Texas game comes to mind.

For the most part, it's not super-complicated-but some people are pretty aggressively ignorant about the rules of the sport.

[Socrefbek]

The referees are not worse. One could argue they are better. The problem is the advent of widely televised games with multiple camera angles allow virtually every call to be sliced and diced. This helps referees prepare and study for their games to improve performance, however, even the smallest mistakes are brought front and center.

Go back to the 70's and even early 80's before college football games were widely televised. The controversy did not exist to this level because most of the suspected "bad" calls could not be replayed and evaluated. Only in the most extreme cases, ala OU-Texas the "incomplete" interception, where the play was captured by photograph did mistakes become huge controversies.

[47straight]

Here's my suggestion. On the assumption that better pay means better competition and better ref's....

1) There's a ton of money to go around. If coaches make more than a million (or 4) bucks a year, dramatically increase the officials' pay.

2) Eliminate whatever tenure rules keep the old bad ones in play like a DMV bureaucrat. Be very demanding of the highest quality in officiating.

[TUSooner]

On the whole, maybe the NCAA refs do a good job. The problem is that the mistakes involving missed REPLAYS are very bad, inexcusable, and sometimes very costly. I mean, the replay is supposed to fix the ordinary (and unavoidable) live-action errors
It doesn't take many botched replays to make the whole thing stinky.

BTW, I do not in any way blame the loss at TT on the refs. Not a bit.
I think the no-TD call was correct, as far as I understand the rule.

[Collier11]

Obviously there are way more instances than just OU and even some that I disagree with that went against Ou could be debatable such as the td at Tech, but the first down play against tech 3 years ago and the three horribly missed calls against Oregon are examples of how inept the replay officials have been!