• Follow us on Twitter @buckeyeplanet and @bp_recruiting, like us on Facebook! Enjoy a post or article, recommend it to others! BP is only as strong as its community, and we only promote by word of mouth, so share away!
  • Consider registering! Fewer and higher quality ads, no emails you don't want, access to all the forums, download game torrents, private messages, polls, Sportsbook, etc. Even if you just want to lurk, there are a lot of good reasons to register!

tBBC Officially Speaking: Untimed Downs

Charles

Guest
Officially Speaking: Untimed Downs
Charles
via our good friends at Buckeye Battle Cry
Visit their fantastic blog and read the full article (and so much more) here


referees-09042015-getty-ftr_16olxskbj4x1z138p97wd6wev9-150x150.jpg

This past weekend’s Central Michigan at Oklahoma State game produced the most exciting and controversial ending of a game yet this season; okay, I know the season is only two weeks old but still, the point stands. In a season that has already seen the Big XII lose a lot of conference prestige thanks to Oklahoma losing to Houston and TCU losing to Arkansas, Oklahoma State added to the conference’s woes as they allowed CMU to score the game winning touchdown on a hail mary play on an untimed down. But should that down have even occurred?

With four seconds left in the fourth quarter, Oklahoma State led 27-24 and hand the ball fourth and 13 on the Central Michigan 41 yard line. The Oklahoma State quarterback dropped back and lobbed a deep ball out-of-bounds to run out the clock. The officials threw a flag for intentional grounding and after CMU accepted the penalty, the Chippewas were given an untimed down on which the miraculous hail mary play occurred for the winning touchdown. The intentional grounding play and the following play by CMU can be seen below.


Let’s break down what happened on the fourth down play by Oklahoma State and see if the officials got this one right. First lets look at the rule on intentional grounding


Rule 7-3-2: A forward pass is illegal if:

g. The passer to conserve time throws the ball forward into an area where there is no eligible Team A receiver.

h. The passer to conserve yardage throws the ball forward into an area where there is no eligible Team A receiver.

Exception: It is not a foul if the passer is or has been outside the tackle box and throws the ball so that it crosses or lands beyond the neutral zone or neutral zone expanded. This applies only to the player who controls the snap or the resulting backward pass and retains possession before throwing the forward pass.

Penalty – Loss of down at the spot of the foul.

From watching the video it is clear that the Oklahoma State quarterback threw the ball forward into an area without an eligible receiver, in fact no OSU receiver had even gone downfield. Central Michigan had a good pass rush on and the quarterback was under pressure and facing a sack that would have actually probably left 1 second on the clock so he was clearly trying to conserve time/yardage when he threw the ball. Since the quarterback had never left the tackle box, the exception doesn’t apply and this is intentional grounding.

So the officials got the call of intentional grounding correct so the next question is did they handle the enforcement correctly when they gave Central Michigan one untimed down?


Rule 3-2-3. a. A period shall be extended for an untimed down if one or more of the following occurs during a down in which time expires:

1. A penalty is accepted for a live-ball foul(s). The period is not extended if the foul is by the team in possession and the statement of the penalty includes loss of down.

2. There are offsetting fouls.

3. An official sounds his whistle inadvertently or otherwise incorrectly signals the ball dead.

Many people incorrectly assume that a game can only be extended due to a penalty by the defense but this isn’t true, a foul by the offense can also extend the game. Now it is rare that a penalty by the offense on the last play of the game would be accepted but imagine a situation where the offense is down by 4 and runs for a touchdown on the last play of the game but a flag is thrown for holding. If the defense declines the penalty, the touchdown would stand and the offense would win, thus the defense would accept the penalty, the yardage would be marked off, and the down would be replayed as an untimed down.

In the Oklahoma State – Central Michigan situation, Oklahoma State committed a foul on a down in which time expired and Central Michigan accepted the penalty. However, as stated in the above rule, there is no untimed down if the team in possession commits a foul that includes a loss of down as part of the penalty. Since the penalty for intentional grounding includes a loss of down, the fourth quarter should not have been extended, there should have been no untimed down, and Oklahoma State would have won the game. The officials got this one wrong and horribly so. To make matters worse, not only did all of the officials on the field get this wrong, the replay officials also got this one wrong.


Rule 12-3-7. No other plays or officiating decisions are reviewable. However, the replay official may correct egregious errors, including those involving the game clock, whether or not a play if reviewable. This excludes fouls that are not specifically reviewable.

An untimed down is a situation that involves the game clock and this was clearly an egregious error, thus the replay officials could have buzzed down to the field and corrected the mistake. Instead, they chose not to do so, letting the mistake stand. For non-conference games, the standard is that the on-field officials are from the conference of the visiting team and the replay officials are from the conference of the home team. That was the case in this game and thus officials from both the MAC and the Big XII messed up here and are to blame.

One of the overarching philosophies that underlies the rules of football is that a team should not gain an advantage by committing a foul. In this case, if Oklahoma State had taken the sack instead of throwing the ball away, there would likely have been one second on the clock and Central Michigan would have had the ball near midfield with one play to go. By throwing the ball away and committing a penalty, OSU allowed the clock to run out and if the penalty had been administered correctly by rule, the game would have been over, the Cowboys would have won and done so by gaining an advantage by committing a foul. So while the officials enforced this penalty incorrectly and against the rules of the game, they actually were in keeping with the overall philosophy that governs the rules.

The “loss of down” exception in the rules concerning extending a period with an untimed down was written to address a situation where the offense is losing and does something like crossing the line of scrimmage and throwing a forward pass that goes for a touchdown. Without the exception, the defense would have a choice of declining the penalty and allowing the score to stand or accepting the penalty and giving the offense another try, both of which give an advantage to the offense. The exception makes sense in that context but unfortunately when they wrote this rule, they didn’t think about the possibility that the offense would be ahead and would commit a penalty in order to run out the clock.

Even though a mistake by the officials at the end of the game altered the outcome of the game, NCAA rules do not allow for the result of the game to be changed. Some people, mostly Oklahoma State fans, have called on CMU to forfeit the win due to the mistake, these voices include the staff of the Oklahoma State student newspaper for who put together this ridiculously self-righteous editorial. CMU should definitely not forfeit the game and the NCAA should not change their rules/policy to allow for the result of a game to be changed due to an officiating error on the last play of the game. Fans have a bad habit of drastically increasing the importance of a call by officials late in the game while underplaying the importance of calls made earlier in the game. No one play or call decides the outcome of a game. If things had played out differently earlier or been called differently earlier, OSU may have been up by multiple scores late in the game or been losing on their final drive. There is no way to go back and correct incorrect calls earlier in the game and thus a mistake on the final play should be treated the same.

When officials make mistakes fans tend to complain that there is no repercussions for those mistakes, primarily because they do not see the officials publically punished. Even though there is rarely public punishment of officials, there are consequences for mistakes and bad calls. Every official is evaluated on every game and incorrect calls and even poor mechanics lower the grade of the official which impacts whether or not they get a post-season assignment or are even hired back next year. This time both the Big XII and MAC conferences made their punishment of the officials public, announcing that both the on-field and replay officials would be suspended for two weeks. This is a major punishment as officials only get paid when they work a game so this will cost the officials a significant amount of money. The punishment also virtually guarantees that not only will none of these officials work a bowl game this season, they are also unlikely to get rehired next year.

The post Officially Speaking: Untimed Downs appeared first on The Buckeye Battle Cry: Ohio State News and Commentary.

Continue reading...
 
Back
Top