MORGANTOWN — Officiating is the most inexact of sciences and the intrusion upon it by technology and slow-motion replay has done nothing to help the reputations of the men and women who perform it in any sport.
The intention, of course, when it was introduced to the game was honorable, to see that obvious officiating blunders would be overturned with clear visual evidence.
Its effect has been quite different and it hardly matters which sport, be it football or baseball, or basketball.
The camera sees what the eye can’t and while that has made the calls more accurate, it has taken the human element out of part of the game where it is most needed. As we head toward robo ball and strike umpires in baseball, boxing gloves where each blow struck can be measured as to its effectiveness and given a value and a baseball runner can be proven out by an eighth of an inch or a football ball carrier’s toe can be shown to be in by a like measurement.
What it takes out of the game is the idea that an official should “call ’em how they see ’em” and that a manager or coach or player can provide wonderful moments of hilarity in arguing the call, be it a baseball manager like Lloyd McClendon pulling the base from the ground and taking it to the dugout or John McEnroe going ballistic over a ball called either out or in.
We mention all this today because there was a pivotal moment in Saturday’s West Virginia loss to Pitt in the Backyard Brawl, a loss that had woven into its fabric a holding call against the Mountaineers’ star left tackle Wyatt Milum that wiped out a long touchdown pass from quarterback Garrett Greene to Hudson Clement.
This set WVU coach Neal Brown off during the game and after the game, stating the call was “100% wrong,” an opinion he held after seeing a replay of it (it is not something allowed to be replayed by the officials during the game) and an opinion that he still clung to on Monday.
The Mountaineers themselves were hardly thrilled with it either. Center Brandon Yates said that “a terrible holding call cost us a touchdown” and confirmed that Milum was also hardly a happy warrior in the aftermath of the call.
At the heart of the problem, Brown eventually would get to, wasn’t whether Milum’s technique on the play was holding under the rule, but instead was a philosophical one for what had transpired existed in some gray area of the holding rule.
The rule first defines what technique can be used with the arms and hands in making a block. It then says “the hands and arms shall not be used to grasp, pull, hook, clamp or encircle that in any way illegally impedes or illegally obstructs an opponent.”
What took place and does on nearly every play is that the defender came into the offensive tackle with his hands and was leaning forward into him. The tackle, Milum, did as he was taught, was to chop down on the hands. As he did that, contact with the tackle was disengaged and the defender lunged forward and started down.
Milum, as taught when the defender went to the ground, piled atop him.
Holding?
It depended what you were looking at, looking for, and from where.
“What I would say on this is officiating games is hard. It’s hard. I’d never stand up here and say we lost a game because of a call. I don’t believe that ever happens … unless you’re the U.S. basketball team against the Soviet Union or something like that.” Brown said, showing a keen Olympic memory.
With that in mind, do you throw a flag?
Brown says that philosophically the official should do nothing..
“He never grabbed hold of him. He chopped his hands. He lost momentum and went down and Wyatt did what he’s supposed to do. Was it a hold? I don’t think so. Do I understand why it was called? I do. I don’t agree with it, but I understand.
“But philosophically I think we should err by not throwing the flag unless it’s a really clear penalty.”
This carries us into another area of discussion and that is how good the officiating is. Certainly, it is not as good as it used to be.
Why?
“We have a bunch of different teams in our league now. There are 16 teams, so our officiating crews are spread out. We have a bunch of new guys in our league,” Brown said.
One has to assume that if they had the best 100 or whatever the number is that they had, by increasing that number by say 50 you have added 50 officials not as capable as the ones you had.
Add to that the speed of the game, the complexity of the rules magnified by the reality that being right isn’t nearly as important to an official as it was because replay can often change the call, if necessary.
At best, officiating is an opinion of what an official sees in real-time, and as any police officer who deals with witnesses describing crimes or criminals they have just interviewed will tell you, the announcer Jack Buck was 100% right when he bellowed out across the national airwaves “I don’t believe what I just saw” as he called Kirk Gibson’s legendary World Series home run.
Brown kind of echoed that sentiment when summing up.
“Do I believe it was holding? Not. It was a critical, critical play in our game …but it is a difficult play to officiate,” he said. “Philosophically, I think where we should be is we should always err on not throwing the flag. We should not err on throwing the flag.”
In other words, let them play unless you are sure there is a foul.
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