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Reverse that game

I've been working on other stuff today, but something not about work has been percolating in the back of my mind since about 3:30 PM today. That's only because it was in the front of my mind from 2:30 until 3:30, when officials in Lubbock, TX, decided that Texas Tech had won the OU-Tech game on the last play. It's led to a radical recommendation from me, as you'll see as you read on.

If you read past sports entries here, you may wonder why I say I'm reluctant to criticize officials when I seem to do it a lot. I think I've said why before, but in recap, let's just say I've seen way, way too many Sooner football fans belligerently complain about "the refs" because they didn't like good calls. The vast, vast majority of the time, the penalty that kills your team's drive is called because your team broke the rules. Just now, the USC - Fresno State game is on as my evening background noise, and USC (behind by 11 points without much time left in the half) completed a pass. Then the ball was on the ground, and Fresno State's defender had picked it up and was running it back the other way.

Ooh! Exciting! USC fumble, Fresno State touchdown! Nope - the referees said he was down. They used instant replay, and that confirmed it. And you know what? The receiver was down. The process of his body hitting the ground dislodged the football, and as every amateur quarterback knows, "the ground can't cause a fumble." I really hoped it was a USC fumble so they'd be down 28-10 with little time left in the first half, but the referees got it right, and replay backed it up. I don't want to hear drunk people bitching at high volume that the defense's fumble recovery was "stolen." They got it right.

Barry Switzer, in particular, was notorious as a coach for blaming losses on anything other than his teams losing, particularly on bad officiating. So when the "Sooner Nation" goes crazy about "bad calls" robbing them of something, my knee-jerk reaction is to tell them to sit down and shut up. The more years of football I watch, the more I can recognize good and bad calls, and most calls are good.

That, my friends, is why today's Texas Tech game mystifies and angers me. At least once per year, I see an actual bad call affect OU in a bad way, sometimes in a way that, in my opinion, costs the Sooners a victory. In 2001, the defending national champ Sooners were undefeated and had stopped Nebraska on a 3rd-and-long situation, pressuring their quarterback, Eric Cartman (or whatever). One of OU's defenders grabbed Cartman by his shoulder pads and spun him around as part of the stop. An official, from a bad angle, threw the flag and said it was a face mask personal foul, a 15-yard penalty that gave Nebraska a first down. On that next play, the fullback who took the handoff threw it to the quarterback, who had run down the field as a receiver. Catch, touchdown, eventual Nebraska victory.

I still can't get over how the 2001 OU-Texas A&M officiating crew allowed A&M a defensive touchdown when one of them had blown the play dead and was seen to do so on film. In each of OU's first 3 away games this year, the defense got an interception that the referees then took away when the tape pretty clearly showed it was an interception. These things happen.

Today, however, was a new low for the Big XII, and the conference can't ignore it any longer.

There were plenty of questionable calls that can go either way, and those are just the breaks. In the 3rd quarter, again, OU had stopped Texas Tech's offense on 3rd and 13, but the referee threw a personal foul penalty, apparently for "roughing the passer." The game was televised on the Fox Sports Network regional channels (FSN Southwest here), but they didn't show the replay. I rewound the TiVo, and I saw that OU's defender was airborne, with his hands up, when Tech's quarterback threw the pass. The defender could not have stopped, and by rule, that's not a foul. Keeps a drive alive, and Tech scores a touchdown on it.

Questionable and annoying, but hardly the worst of the day. In the last minute, the score was OU 21, Tech 17. Tech was driving left-to-right with no timeouts, trying desperately to score and perhaps secure a Cotton Bowl berth. Tech passes to the back near corner of the end zone, and the receiver touches the ball a few times and runs out of bounds. He never caught the ball. He never held it in his hands, and when he ran out of bounds, he didn't even hold onto it. Not only did he not have possession of the ball in the end zone, he never possessed the ball at all. It was immediately obvious in real time that the receiver had not caught the ball at all.

The official standing right there signaled "touchdown." The replays clearly showed the receiver had never possessed the ball. ESPN Radio's announcers said the "touchdown" call was perhaps the worst call they had ever seen in all their years of watching football. The replay booth initiated review and reversed the call, but it was shocking - shocking - that the call was made at all.

Fast forward just a bit. With six seconds left in the game, Tech has first down on OU's 2-yard line due to a legitimate pass interference penalty (an OU defender grabbed a Tech receiver that had beaten him), down 21-17, and no time outs. Tech throws a quick incompletion that takes two seconds off the clock, which stops on the incompletion. 0:04 left in the game now. If Tech runs and does not get into the end zone, the game is over. If a pass play takes longer than four seconds, the game is over. Tech has a good team this year, and this could go either way.

The snap comes. Tech hands off to running back Taurean Henderson, who heads right up the middle! He's tackled near the goal line! The clock runs to 0:00. The officials stationed on the goal line on either sideline run in. There's no signal. There's no time on the clock. After 2-3 seconds, the official from the far sideline signals: touchdown. Tech has scored with no time left, and won the game, beating OU for the first time since 1999. Instant replay reviews the play and leaves it as called on the field.

Wow. What an ending. Except it was completely blown.

No slag on Texas Tech - great football team, no cheating that I could see on this, never gave up. But find a sports show this weekend and look at the highlight. Watch the final play. Henderson is tackled and is down shy of the end zone. With his entire torso on the ground, he reaches forward with his left hand and puts the ball in the end zone. The ball had not crossed the plane of the goal line before he was down. It was not a touchdown. Massive effort on Henderson's part, but he came up short.

While FSN was showing this, the completely useless announcers were speculating that maybe Henderson's knees were on top of another player on the field, so he wasn't down, or something like that. That was dumb at the time. It was, again, completely obvious in real time that Henderson was short of the goal line. You know why?

His right elbow was on the ground as he was reaching forward with his left arm. The NCAA rule is 4-1-3-b, on page FR-74 of the 2005 NCAA Football Rules and Interpretations book. Sometimes announcers and pundits and others get confused about the differences between NCAA and NFL rules, but this is pretty dang simple, folks:

Ball Declared Dead

ARTICLE 3. A live ball becomes dead and an official shall sound his whistle or declare it dead:

[...] b. When any part of the runner's body, except his hand or foot, touches the ground or when the runner is tackled or otherwise falls and loses possession of the ball as he contacts the ground with any part of his body, except his hand or foot.

There was no question, in real time or on instant replay, that part of Henderson's body other than his hand or foot touched the ground before the ball crossed the plane of the goal line. No question. Right now, at 12:52 in the third quarter of the USC-Fresno State game, Reggie Bush has just made a big run and stretched his arm out at the end across the goal line - but he didn't do it before another part of his body had touched the ground, and the officials properly signaled the ball down inside the 1-yard line. That's what should have happened in Lubbock this afternoon.

And yet not only did it not happen, the instant replay booth didn't overturn it. This is a spectacular failure for Big XII officiating that, on any given week, is not that great to begin with. Several officials staring right at it had the chance to get it right and they did not (though, in fairness, the official who was on the near side goal line was not signaling that Henderson had scored - he just didn't insist that Henderson hadn't scored). The replay officials saw the same angles that are on the highlight shows, and they refused to correct an obvious, horrible, game-altering mistake.

The Big XII has had a lot of these embarrassments, though maybe none so high-profile as this lately. Any long-time Big Eight follower (from the pre-Big XII days) remembers the crew that gave Colorado five downs to score late in their game at Missouri in 1990. Miami fans have still not forgiven the Big XII official who (legitimately, in my view), called pass interference in overtime in the 2003 Fiesta Bowl to give Ohio State more life. (Not only do I think the call was legit, but I think that if OU had to play with that officiating, so should everyone else.)

But nothing ever comes of this stuff except promises to do better that never seem to make much difference. The Big XII can overturn a victory in the record books - and does so if probation-style penalties require a school to forfeit some of its victories - but has never done so for a football game. Take that 2001 OU v. Nebraska game. Even though Nebraska got a touchdown one play after the bad penalty call, you can't prove that OU would have won the game had that penalty not been called. There was a quarter and a half of football left to play. When Colorado got a fifth down and scored on the final play, the NCAA said its rules did not allow it to overturn the game's results. That appears to be interpretation, not fact.

But in that case, there was football left to play. Colorado's quarterback spiked the ball on fourth down because the sideline down counter said "3." While that should have given the ball to Missouri with 0:02 left, it did not, and you cannot assume that those last two seconds would have gone Missouri's way.

Today, there was no football left. The clock expired during the play in question. No matter which way the ball was spotted, the game was over. Texas Tech had to make a point-after try by rule, so there was eventually another snap of the football, but it was an untimed post-game down, and the try was incomplete anyway (Tech didn't even attempt to kick). Whether the ruling on the field was "touchdown" or "3rd down, time expires," the game was over.

The Big XII can and should reverse this game. Yeah, I wanted OU to win, but the fact is that Oklahoma did win the game. It is undeniable from video evidence that Texas Tech did not get the ball into the end zone on the final play of the game. To pretend that they did so serves no purpose, except maybe to get Tech into the Cotton Bowl, and I don't object to that. Let them go to the Cotton Bowl. They had a great year.

But the Big XII has never overturned the results of a game like this due to obviously deficient officiating, and the conference will never, ever, have a better chance to do it. It sets the precedent that if a bad call on the last play absolutely and without question decided the game, then the conference will do the right thing. It will shock the football world, it will humiliate its officials, and do whatever is necessary to get correct results. I have wanted a major conference to take an action like this for many years because the current situation tells everyone, including officials, that cheating at the end works. If you can fool the officials in the last few seconds, you can win the game, and even when everyone knows that it decided the game, you'll pay no price for it.

Just as I wanted whichever official made that horrible 2001 OU vs. A&M "oh, let's let them play with a dead ball" call fired, I think this crew should be fired and the results overturned. I'm pretty sure I would feel this way had it been the Baylor-OSU game, or Army-Navy, or anything else, though I saw this one up close because I'm an OU fan. If the Big XII and the NCAA shrug their shoulders and let this stand, it's all the proof you'll need that they will never, ever, ever do anything about the worst officiating you could possibly fear seeing at the end of a game.

Purists hate instant replay because it takes action off the field, but everyone else likes it and tolerates the delays because it's important to live in reality. It's important to acknowledge and live by the principle that facts are facts, and when we can know what happened on the field, it is absolutely ridiculous to have to pretend that something else happened instead. When it gets this far, they always say, "You don't know how the rest of the game would have turned out." This time, absolutely, we do. The game ended on the play in question, and it was called incorrectly.

The final score of today's game in the record books should be OU 21, Texas Tech 17, and every official who called it wrong should never officiate an NCAA game again. If that's not what happens, then everyone is admitting, but trying not to say, that the NCAA and the Big XII simply do not care if the officials get the calls right, because when it came down to it, they chose the fantasy error on the field over the facts known to the entire world.

I have no illusions that either the NCAA or the Big XII will do this. I just want everyone to be very clear on what that refusal means.

The following updates were originally posted to a news item on home page, but have been archived here. Dates have been added where appropriate

Update: Berry Tramel's morning-after column in the Oklahoman says that no one knows if Henderson scored, that replay made the game worse, and that it should be abolished. He is demonstrably wrong on all counts. Henderson obviously did not score, lack of instant replay would have given Tech the "winning" touchdown on a pass that the receiver obviously did not catch, and the solution to bad replay decisions is to get replay officials who can see and aren't afraid to make unpopular calls, not to eliminate the replay officials altogether. Tramel's argument is akin to "Well, the official in the end zone couldn't see if the pass was caught, so let's get rid of officials in the end zone and make the game faster." Moron.

Update #2: Coach Bob Stoops sees no point in protesting the game, and I agree with that. Stoops's job and focus is not to make sure Big XII officiating is based in reality. The conference, and the NCAA, however, have a very strong interest in that very issue. They need to act on their own, not because OU protests.

They won't, of course, but they should. And it continues to be ridiculous that sports writers are pretending there wasn't enough evidence. Henderson's elbow was down. It couldn't be clearer if it was a button hook in the well water.

Update #3: The Oklahoman's John Rohde weighs in two days later, agreeing that the call was horrible, but also wanting to get rid of instant replay. His #1 reason? "Who outside of Lubbock would want replay after what happened Saturday?" Remember that replay overturned the other egregious call, a "touchdown" pass where the receiver never caught the ball at all. What the hell is it with the Oklahoman's sports columnists, who want to ditch a fact-checking system the first time it has a significant failure?

And this from a newspaper that still defends George W. Bush. Geez.

Update #4: If you have any doubts as to why I emphasized that the conference and the league need to take drastic action, look no further than this three-day after story from the Oklahoman.
NORMAN - Big 12 commissioner Kevin Weiberg said Monday the conference will review the controversial ending of Texas Tech's 23-21 win over Oklahoma. But don't expect a public resolution. Weiberg said he would adhere to the Big 12's policy of not commenting on game officials' "judgment calls." "Even if we made a decision that a call had been missed, any kind of action related to an official on a judgment call would not be disclosed publicly," Weiberg said. [...] Weiberg said the conference office had not received OU's report on the officiating. In addition to addressing OU's concerns, the game will undergo an evaluation by a team of former officials, as part of the Big 12's weekly process of reviewing "every play of every game." The resulting grades are used in evaluations of game officials and could affect assignments and retention, Weiberg said. "In very rare circumstances, if there's a need for any action with an official on a weekly basis, we've used (the grades) to reprimand officials or adjust their assignments," Weiberg said.
You hear that? If they find that those officials made repeated, consistent mistakes that gave the game to the wrong team, the Big XII might speak to them harshly. In "very rare circumstances," they might be assigned to another game. My recommendation was simple: fire officials who make bad calls that clearly decide games, and reverse the outcome. Weiberg's quotes make it abundantly clear that the Big XII simply does not care if the officials' calls are based in reality or not. Whatever they say, goes, and they'll be held minimally responsible if held accountable at all. This is no plan for any organization. Update #5: Yep, you knew it would happen - a month later, after all the hullabaloo had calmed down, the Big XII officially backed up all three botched calls, saying that they were correctly decided or reversed in the stadium, and that's all there is to it.
On the game's final play, Henderson was hit near the 2, and then stretched the ball toward the goal line as he fell. Several replays appeared to show what Stoops contended, that Henderson was down before reaching the end zone. "Ball carrier rear end is down first time he reaches ball (over the goal line). Not over (the goal line) until the second time he reaches to put ball over." [said Stoops's official complaint to the Big XII] [Big XII supervisor of officials Tim] Millis' response: "Ruling (was) ball breaking plane on initial movement not second effort to push it a couple of feet over goal line."
The ball didn't break the plane at any time before the runner was down. Every replay shows this. The Big XII simply does not care if the referees' calls are based in reality or not. They don't care, they won't fix it, they won't change, they won't do anything but cover their own asses to avoid the accountability moment that could destroy the conference. They do not care if the officials call the game correctly or not. It's that simple and that sad.

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