It’s easy to complain about the officiating when your team loses.
Often times, it has a lot more to do with the team’s performance and the people paid to play the game than the people paid (a lot less) to police it.
Lately, the officials have been making a huge impact on important games and the glaring mistakes are too big to overlook.
MLB Playoffs
The baseball playoffs have been marred by numerous missed calls. C.B. Bucknor missed two calls in the American League Division Series featuring the Red Sox and Angels.
Phil Cuzzi blew a huge call by ruling Joe Mauer’s double-to-be foul when it was fair by a wide margin. Jerry Meals should have ruled a Chase Utley infield hit a foul ball instead Utley was ruled safe and the Phillies mounted a comeback against the Rockies in the National League Division Series.
Dale Scott missed two calls in back-to-back games of the New York-Los Angeles series and Tim McClelland has missed three — two of which were egregious in the same series as part of the same umpiring crew.
McClelland’s blown calls in Tuesday night’s Game 4 were cause for instant debate. Baseball’s response was to announce that only veteran umpires would work the World Series instead of letting one or two rookie umps work the Fall Classic as is customary.
New umpires haven’t been the ones missing calls.
The baseball purist finds no room in the game for instant replay. Another argument against it is that the games are already too long.
If the game takes five hours, but the equity is restored, then so be it. The average game would feature only a couple of reviews at most, which means another five minutes max.
Each team should have two challenges just like football. If a challenge is successful, the team retains that right if; the call is not changed, they lose it.
Baseball made a step in the right direction by allowing it for home runs or what they deem “boundary calls.” But full discretion on boundary calls, like fair or foul is needed and the game could even borrow from tennis and the Hawkeye system if need be.
The point as always is to get the call right. If baseball wants to maintain the integrity of the game, there is really no other choice.
Umpires are human and make mistakes, but the technology exists to correct errors when they are made and it’s silly not to take advantage of it. It works in football and there is no reason it can’t work for MLB.
College Football
Speaking of football, the game is not immune from terrible lapses in judgment from its officials. In last week’s Florida-Arkansas game, there was a plethora of horrible officiating and the SEC was finally forced to admit as much after reviewing the tape.
Well, sort of. The conference suspended the crew from working its next scheduled game on Oct. 31. The members won’t work again until Nov. 14.
This is the same crew that whistled Georgia’s A.J. Green for excessive celebration with just 1:09 remaining in a 13-13 game against LSU that gave the Tigers great field position on the eventual game-winning touchdown drive.
What the SEC did admit was that referee Marc Curles’ unsportsmanlike conduct call against Arkansas’ Malcolm Sheppard was wrong, but there were numerous other questionable whistles. The rest were simply “judgment calls” and thus questioning their merit was a matter of opinion.
Every call made by an official is a judgment call. This crew displayed poor judgment all game.
I was watching the game live and texted a friend this in response to Sheppard’s hit: “This is football! The guy ran at him and he decked him!”
Sheppard was whistled for the penalty since Curles caught the Florida player getting pancaked out of the corner of his eye, far behind the play. What he failed to see was the Florida player make a run at him 20-25 yards behind the ball and Sheppard respond with a perfectly legal hit.
There was another official no more than five feet from the incident. Why doesn’t he overrule Curles?
This came on the heels of a phantom pass interference call that gave the top-ranked Gators 15 yards and they scored a game-tying TD right after these consecutive calls.
I’ve made this point about the NFL and it should apply to big-time college football. There is way too much money involved for these guys not to be full-time employees. They show up for game weekends and hold other jobs during the week.
If they are going to miss calls, reviewable or otherwise, then it’s obvious the biggest culprit is lack of preparation. Politics aside, because the conspiracy theories exist — and sure seem plausible at times — the NFL and the BCS conferences can put these guys on payroll full-time and the product would be much improved as a result.
The best game is where no one even knows the officials are there.
The players go about their business and the game is decided between the white lines. In the case where instant replay is needed, get the calls right and move on.
To have any other result, is to cheat the game and everyone involved.