Charles
Guest
tBBC Roundtable: The State of Football Officiating
Charles via our good friends at Buckeye Battle Cry
Visit their fantastic blog and read the full article (and so much more) here
With the college football season almost over, we here at tBBC decided to sit down and talk about one of the most complained aspects of college football, officiating. One of the guarantees of every football season is that fans will complain about officiating, how it hurt their team, and how something needs to be done to make it better. Our writers discussed several of these issues as we looked at the state of college football officiating.
How do you feel that football officiating this year compared to previous years?
Ken – Actually, I don’t think the (NCAA) officiating is too much different this year than past years. Not that was especially impressed in previous years, but I don’t think the on-field performance has been that far off the mark. However, I do think the replay review function is inept. There were several “upon further review” decisions that I could not fathom at all.
Michael – To be honest, it probably hasn’t been as bad as previous years. The main problem is there is now social media (twitter, Facebook) and a lot sports TV channels who can show how bad a call was over and over and talk about it over and over again.
Brandon – I think there is a long-standing tradition to hate officiating which goes back as far as I can remember. No matter who you talk to, whatever conference their favorite team plays in has the worst officials. They can name numerous instances where those conference officials screwed over their team. I really don’t think there is anything worse this year than years past, I just think we have better technology and more avenues for armchair officials to voice their opinion.
WVa – I think that officiating as a whole has improved a bit over the last two years just because they are working diligently to get things right and improve their initial calls. Adding an eighth official can be difficult as well as improving their replay officials. There have still been issues in getting that right but I think it will get better.
Scott – I don’t think the officiating is any worse than it has been in years past. There are not more errors than before. What I have noticed is that there are more high profile mistakes … Mistakes in big games and big mistakes in games.
Charles – As several of the others have said, I don’t think that officiating is getting any worse. However, the increased use of social media to complain gives the impression that officiating is worse because people are louder in their complaints. Things are made worse by the increased competition by sports media and the realization that controversy sells and thus the media tries to push these stories in order to get viewers.
There have been several controversial endings to big games this year (i.e. Nebraska-MSU, Duke-Miami, Clemson-North Carolina), how do you feel about the response from the conferences about these games?
Ken – Well, the Duke-Miami crew did get suspended for two games, so there’s that. Pretty tepid response from the Conferences because they just don’t give a shit. They know that millions of fans will tune in to watch their games each week, so far better off to wrist-slap, rationalize or ignore the officiating failures. We’ll still be there glued to the tube or attending the games. Nothing to see here folks, just keep moving..
Michael – Terrible, to put it mild. The biggest conference to drop the ball of course has been the ACC. They’ve had 2 terrible calls decide games this year and their response was basically “Yeah our officials screwed up, yes the screw ups made one team and one lose, but sorry, nothing we can do about it.” When there is something they can do about it. Now the end of the Nebraska/Michigan St game and the Clemson/North Carolina game were just bad calls by referees. You’re going to have that. Its part of the game. Not everyone is going to agree what a penalty is and isn’t. I completely understand that. However, the Duke/Miami FL game was completely screwed up with by the referees, replay official, and the conference. There were multiple blown calls on the final play that if any where called correctly the game is over and Duke wins. Its that simple. The ACC badly needed to step in and reverse that game.
Brandon – Conferences have done all they can do. You have instances where it is public the officials made a horrible call and they were subsequently suspended and you have other instances where conferences kept quiet. I think they are doing all they can do because it would be next to impossible for them to go back and change an outcome. The best chance to see that was the Duke vs Miami game and it didn’t happen.
WVa – I think the conferences are in a tough spot any time they have to discipline a crew for a mistake. The conference officiating boss regularly evaluates all officials every weekend. I believe they also have to evaluate themselves within 24-48 hours of the game and in a lot of cases the big time crews are watching as soon as they get back to their motels.
The ACC did what they had to do with the crew from the Miami-Duke game because they willfully ignored calls that would have reversed what occurred. There’s no room for that type of attitude in officiating and I applaud the conference for disciplining them it’s a shame they weren’t willing to set a precedent and reverse what happened and give Duke the win.
Scott – I don’t think it was adequate. Suspending a crew is fine. But there should be more punishment.
Charles – I think the conferences handled these incidents fine and we don’t know the full extent of their response to the officials involved since that is normally not made public. Officials are evaluated after every game and those evaluations matter when it comes to bowl game assignments and being hired back next year. We have no idea what the crews involved got in their evaluations and if it will cost them future assignments. I find it frustrating that so many sports fans want officials to be punished publicly. How many of you are punished publicly when you make a mistake in your job? And if public punishment is required for mistakes in sporting events because the mistake is made in public, why do fans not demand to know how many windsprints or stadium stairs the star receiver has to run after he drops a game winning touchdown?
In terms of people calling for the result of the Duke-Miami game to be reversed, I understand that but the issue I have with it is that it makes calls on the final play more important than a call made at any other time. Any play during the game effects the outcome and Duke and Miami were in that situation because of any number of plays that had happened earlier. If any of those plays or calls had gone differently, then Miami may not have been in position to win in the manner they did or they might have already had the win wrapped up on the last play.
What do you feel are the biggest issues with football officiating?
Ken – Having game results often determined by part-time rules interpreters. It’s been that way for a long time. Live with it. It’s only a game, folks.
Michael – There are 2. 1st is that referees tend to anticipate a penalty. They see a play happening and think that a penalty is coming and throw the flag before it actually does. Then when on TV replay it shows there wasn’t one, it looks bad. 2nd, I think more and more referees think they are part of the action. They want to be seen, want to be heard and want to look good.
Brandon – The biggest issue with officiating is the fact the players keep getting bigger, stronger, and faster. It is hard for these officials to keep up with everything on the field at the high-end speed these young men show nowadays. The other issue is the amount of scrutiny the officials receive. It is not easy to do a job where millions of people judge your every move…even if they know the rules or not.
WVa – I tried to do a bit of research regarding the turnover on college football the last two seasons and had some issues finding out specific information for it. There use to be a site StatSheet that gave you college basketball officials stats but it is now defunct.
I know that just about every college football crew this year had to deal with the major change of an eight member with the addition of the center in the backfield with the Referee. It should have improved the crew but it caused a lot of mechanics changes and where the umpire and referee were looking during plays.
There has also been a decent turnover in referees on the crews that work the B1G this season as long time bosses finally retired. This turnover and growth of crews across the board can cause some issues as they try to become more familiar with themselves.
Scott – The game is getting faster and the officials are getting older and slower.
Charles – I think the biggest issues with officiating is that officials are not full time employees and it is harder to find enough interested and qualified officials. In many ways these two problems go hand in hand. Since college football officials are not full time, they all must have other jobs. This dramatically reduces the pool of people that you can draw officials from since you are limited to people who have jobs that are flexible and understanding enough to allow this and either don’t have families or who have families that are very understanding. The difficulty in finding more qualified officials means that we have to keep relying on existing officials who are getting older and while their experience is very important and helpful, there is also the difficulty of making sure you are in the right position in a game that is getting faster.
I strongly disagree with Michael’s statement that more and more officials want to be seen. There are of course a few officials who are like that but I think they are a very tiny minority. One of the things that is drilled into officials as they move up the ranks is that getting noticed during a game can lead to either good or bad evaluations while not getting noticed very rarely leads to a bad evaluation. This doesn’t lead to a culture where people want to be noticed, especially since they have reached the college ranks and thus obviously highly value good evaluations.
What are the biggest things that officiating is doing right?
Ken – The flagging and reviewing of hits in the head/neck area. With only 1.6% of participating seniors getting drafted into the NFL making a lucrative career in the NFL is Not Very Likely. There is a lot of chirping about officials missing a “was the pass complete” call, but it’s far better to protect what’s in the braincase.Let’s keep things in perspective.
Michael – More and more replay. Now, I’m not going to sit here and tell you that every call should be replayed. We would have 6 hour football games. But the plays that need replayed are starting to get replayed and that needs to continue.
Brandon – I think officials are doing the best job they can. There are obvious calls, like the ones mentioned earlier, that open the flood gates but I think there are also a lot of rules which are left up to interpretation. Does anyone really know what is considered a catch anymore? Does anyone know what exactly targeting is? Between new rules, instant replay, and old rules being changed there is always a cloud of doubt on what should be called.
WVa – As I said above, I believe that the NCAA and the officiating leadership are taking the right steps to improve the level of officiating for college football. For the most part these crews are working at a high level and are doing a pretty good job in games. There appears to be a slight consistency issue with the targeting rule but as a whole it’s better than it was before.
Scott – Replay and conferring to make sure a call is right.
Charles – I love the move to 8 man crews and while there is still some adjusting to be done to get used to the new mechanics involved, I think this will greatly improve officiating.
How would you go about improving officiating?
Ken – I don’t have an issue with on-field calls. However, train officials on how to properly interpret video replays. Their ineptness in this area is an embarrassment to the game and to their profession. Or, at least it should be.
Michael – In college football, I’d do 2 things. 1st, stop with this conference officials. Its a Big 10 crew or a ACC crew or a SEC crew. Stop that stuff. Just have referees for every game that isn’t apart of one conference or another. 2nd, better training. There are some rules that no one can tell what is or isn’t a penalty. One referee says this is a penalty, another one doesn’t.
Brandon – There is not much you can do. The only viable option is to add one or two more officials onto the field but that may not even work. You can’t replay every play in the booth because we already complain when they take over a minute.
WVa – I have often thought from my perspective how I would go about improving them. These men are like NFL referees. They have regular jobs back in their hometowns and have an off season with clinics and getting prepared for the season. But unlike basketball officials they have no offseason of lower level games to truly get ready so they need to find other opportunities to get together.
They need to spend more time reviewing film in the offseason of last seasons games and compare rules or mechanics changes to what they did.
Scott – With the game getting faster I think more on-field officials need to be added and I think a couple in the press box who have the ability to “throw a flag” would be nice as well.
Charles – I think the biggest thing that can be done is to make college officials full time. Currently every week officials have to review game film from the previous week and talk about it with the rest of their crew, discuss the upcoming game with their crew, travel to and from the game, work the game, and continue to study and improve their understanding of the rules and situations that can occur. And of course they have to do this all while also working their normal job. This take up a lot of time and energy and that likely impacts the performance of officials at both of their jobs. Making officials full time would mean they would have more time to devote to training, studying film, and preparing for their next game while also meaning they have more energy. It would also increase the pool of potential officials because you wouldn’t have to rely on people with flexible jobs and who don’t need to spend a lot of time with their family.
The post tBBC Roundtable: The State of Football Officiating appeared first on The Buckeye Battle Cry: Ohio State News and Commentary.
Continue reading...
Charles via our good friends at Buckeye Battle Cry
Visit their fantastic blog and read the full article (and so much more) here
With the college football season almost over, we here at tBBC decided to sit down and talk about one of the most complained aspects of college football, officiating. One of the guarantees of every football season is that fans will complain about officiating, how it hurt their team, and how something needs to be done to make it better. Our writers discussed several of these issues as we looked at the state of college football officiating.
How do you feel that football officiating this year compared to previous years?
Ken – Actually, I don’t think the (NCAA) officiating is too much different this year than past years. Not that was especially impressed in previous years, but I don’t think the on-field performance has been that far off the mark. However, I do think the replay review function is inept. There were several “upon further review” decisions that I could not fathom at all.
Michael – To be honest, it probably hasn’t been as bad as previous years. The main problem is there is now social media (twitter, Facebook) and a lot sports TV channels who can show how bad a call was over and over and talk about it over and over again.
Brandon – I think there is a long-standing tradition to hate officiating which goes back as far as I can remember. No matter who you talk to, whatever conference their favorite team plays in has the worst officials. They can name numerous instances where those conference officials screwed over their team. I really don’t think there is anything worse this year than years past, I just think we have better technology and more avenues for armchair officials to voice their opinion.
WVa – I think that officiating as a whole has improved a bit over the last two years just because they are working diligently to get things right and improve their initial calls. Adding an eighth official can be difficult as well as improving their replay officials. There have still been issues in getting that right but I think it will get better.
Scott – I don’t think the officiating is any worse than it has been in years past. There are not more errors than before. What I have noticed is that there are more high profile mistakes … Mistakes in big games and big mistakes in games.
Charles – As several of the others have said, I don’t think that officiating is getting any worse. However, the increased use of social media to complain gives the impression that officiating is worse because people are louder in their complaints. Things are made worse by the increased competition by sports media and the realization that controversy sells and thus the media tries to push these stories in order to get viewers.
There have been several controversial endings to big games this year (i.e. Nebraska-MSU, Duke-Miami, Clemson-North Carolina), how do you feel about the response from the conferences about these games?
Ken – Well, the Duke-Miami crew did get suspended for two games, so there’s that. Pretty tepid response from the Conferences because they just don’t give a shit. They know that millions of fans will tune in to watch their games each week, so far better off to wrist-slap, rationalize or ignore the officiating failures. We’ll still be there glued to the tube or attending the games. Nothing to see here folks, just keep moving..
Michael – Terrible, to put it mild. The biggest conference to drop the ball of course has been the ACC. They’ve had 2 terrible calls decide games this year and their response was basically “Yeah our officials screwed up, yes the screw ups made one team and one lose, but sorry, nothing we can do about it.” When there is something they can do about it. Now the end of the Nebraska/Michigan St game and the Clemson/North Carolina game were just bad calls by referees. You’re going to have that. Its part of the game. Not everyone is going to agree what a penalty is and isn’t. I completely understand that. However, the Duke/Miami FL game was completely screwed up with by the referees, replay official, and the conference. There were multiple blown calls on the final play that if any where called correctly the game is over and Duke wins. Its that simple. The ACC badly needed to step in and reverse that game.
Brandon – Conferences have done all they can do. You have instances where it is public the officials made a horrible call and they were subsequently suspended and you have other instances where conferences kept quiet. I think they are doing all they can do because it would be next to impossible for them to go back and change an outcome. The best chance to see that was the Duke vs Miami game and it didn’t happen.
WVa – I think the conferences are in a tough spot any time they have to discipline a crew for a mistake. The conference officiating boss regularly evaluates all officials every weekend. I believe they also have to evaluate themselves within 24-48 hours of the game and in a lot of cases the big time crews are watching as soon as they get back to their motels.
The ACC did what they had to do with the crew from the Miami-Duke game because they willfully ignored calls that would have reversed what occurred. There’s no room for that type of attitude in officiating and I applaud the conference for disciplining them it’s a shame they weren’t willing to set a precedent and reverse what happened and give Duke the win.
Scott – I don’t think it was adequate. Suspending a crew is fine. But there should be more punishment.
Charles – I think the conferences handled these incidents fine and we don’t know the full extent of their response to the officials involved since that is normally not made public. Officials are evaluated after every game and those evaluations matter when it comes to bowl game assignments and being hired back next year. We have no idea what the crews involved got in their evaluations and if it will cost them future assignments. I find it frustrating that so many sports fans want officials to be punished publicly. How many of you are punished publicly when you make a mistake in your job? And if public punishment is required for mistakes in sporting events because the mistake is made in public, why do fans not demand to know how many windsprints or stadium stairs the star receiver has to run after he drops a game winning touchdown?
In terms of people calling for the result of the Duke-Miami game to be reversed, I understand that but the issue I have with it is that it makes calls on the final play more important than a call made at any other time. Any play during the game effects the outcome and Duke and Miami were in that situation because of any number of plays that had happened earlier. If any of those plays or calls had gone differently, then Miami may not have been in position to win in the manner they did or they might have already had the win wrapped up on the last play.
What do you feel are the biggest issues with football officiating?
Ken – Having game results often determined by part-time rules interpreters. It’s been that way for a long time. Live with it. It’s only a game, folks.
Michael – There are 2. 1st is that referees tend to anticipate a penalty. They see a play happening and think that a penalty is coming and throw the flag before it actually does. Then when on TV replay it shows there wasn’t one, it looks bad. 2nd, I think more and more referees think they are part of the action. They want to be seen, want to be heard and want to look good.
Brandon – The biggest issue with officiating is the fact the players keep getting bigger, stronger, and faster. It is hard for these officials to keep up with everything on the field at the high-end speed these young men show nowadays. The other issue is the amount of scrutiny the officials receive. It is not easy to do a job where millions of people judge your every move…even if they know the rules or not.
WVa – I tried to do a bit of research regarding the turnover on college football the last two seasons and had some issues finding out specific information for it. There use to be a site StatSheet that gave you college basketball officials stats but it is now defunct.
I know that just about every college football crew this year had to deal with the major change of an eight member with the addition of the center in the backfield with the Referee. It should have improved the crew but it caused a lot of mechanics changes and where the umpire and referee were looking during plays.
There has also been a decent turnover in referees on the crews that work the B1G this season as long time bosses finally retired. This turnover and growth of crews across the board can cause some issues as they try to become more familiar with themselves.
Scott – The game is getting faster and the officials are getting older and slower.
Charles – I think the biggest issues with officiating is that officials are not full time employees and it is harder to find enough interested and qualified officials. In many ways these two problems go hand in hand. Since college football officials are not full time, they all must have other jobs. This dramatically reduces the pool of people that you can draw officials from since you are limited to people who have jobs that are flexible and understanding enough to allow this and either don’t have families or who have families that are very understanding. The difficulty in finding more qualified officials means that we have to keep relying on existing officials who are getting older and while their experience is very important and helpful, there is also the difficulty of making sure you are in the right position in a game that is getting faster.
I strongly disagree with Michael’s statement that more and more officials want to be seen. There are of course a few officials who are like that but I think they are a very tiny minority. One of the things that is drilled into officials as they move up the ranks is that getting noticed during a game can lead to either good or bad evaluations while not getting noticed very rarely leads to a bad evaluation. This doesn’t lead to a culture where people want to be noticed, especially since they have reached the college ranks and thus obviously highly value good evaluations.
What are the biggest things that officiating is doing right?
Ken – The flagging and reviewing of hits in the head/neck area. With only 1.6% of participating seniors getting drafted into the NFL making a lucrative career in the NFL is Not Very Likely. There is a lot of chirping about officials missing a “was the pass complete” call, but it’s far better to protect what’s in the braincase.Let’s keep things in perspective.
Michael – More and more replay. Now, I’m not going to sit here and tell you that every call should be replayed. We would have 6 hour football games. But the plays that need replayed are starting to get replayed and that needs to continue.
Brandon – I think officials are doing the best job they can. There are obvious calls, like the ones mentioned earlier, that open the flood gates but I think there are also a lot of rules which are left up to interpretation. Does anyone really know what is considered a catch anymore? Does anyone know what exactly targeting is? Between new rules, instant replay, and old rules being changed there is always a cloud of doubt on what should be called.
WVa – As I said above, I believe that the NCAA and the officiating leadership are taking the right steps to improve the level of officiating for college football. For the most part these crews are working at a high level and are doing a pretty good job in games. There appears to be a slight consistency issue with the targeting rule but as a whole it’s better than it was before.
Scott – Replay and conferring to make sure a call is right.
Charles – I love the move to 8 man crews and while there is still some adjusting to be done to get used to the new mechanics involved, I think this will greatly improve officiating.
How would you go about improving officiating?
Ken – I don’t have an issue with on-field calls. However, train officials on how to properly interpret video replays. Their ineptness in this area is an embarrassment to the game and to their profession. Or, at least it should be.
Michael – In college football, I’d do 2 things. 1st, stop with this conference officials. Its a Big 10 crew or a ACC crew or a SEC crew. Stop that stuff. Just have referees for every game that isn’t apart of one conference or another. 2nd, better training. There are some rules that no one can tell what is or isn’t a penalty. One referee says this is a penalty, another one doesn’t.
Brandon – There is not much you can do. The only viable option is to add one or two more officials onto the field but that may not even work. You can’t replay every play in the booth because we already complain when they take over a minute.
WVa – I have often thought from my perspective how I would go about improving them. These men are like NFL referees. They have regular jobs back in their hometowns and have an off season with clinics and getting prepared for the season. But unlike basketball officials they have no offseason of lower level games to truly get ready so they need to find other opportunities to get together.
They need to spend more time reviewing film in the offseason of last seasons games and compare rules or mechanics changes to what they did.
Scott – With the game getting faster I think more on-field officials need to be added and I think a couple in the press box who have the ability to “throw a flag” would be nice as well.
Charles – I think the biggest thing that can be done is to make college officials full time. Currently every week officials have to review game film from the previous week and talk about it with the rest of their crew, discuss the upcoming game with their crew, travel to and from the game, work the game, and continue to study and improve their understanding of the rules and situations that can occur. And of course they have to do this all while also working their normal job. This take up a lot of time and energy and that likely impacts the performance of officials at both of their jobs. Making officials full time would mean they would have more time to devote to training, studying film, and preparing for their next game while also meaning they have more energy. It would also increase the pool of potential officials because you wouldn’t have to rely on people with flexible jobs and who don’t need to spend a lot of time with their family.
The post tBBC Roundtable: The State of Football Officiating appeared first on The Buckeye Battle Cry: Ohio State News and Commentary.
Continue reading...