Two minutes for incompetence

Too many calls are being missed by big-time officials

For much of this past week I was in the company of a prominent college basketball coach, reporting a story for Sports Illustrated. During a chunk of our time together, we watched videotape of basketball games. This is something coaches spend a lot of time doing, for obvious reasons.

Two things became apparent while we sat in front of the screen: 1) Coaches know a lot about the sport they coach. This might seem obvious, but in the media's (and the public's) desire to glorify (or demean) various coaches' ability to do their jobs, we forget that even the unsuccessful ones see things on the field/court/diamond/rink that the rest of us do not. 2) They also fixate on officiating, not just because subtleties in officiating can decide games, but because over the course of a closely watched game -- back and forth, in slow motion and slower -- a lot of funny things happen involving the officials.

We were watching one game, this coach and I, and there was a whistle along the baseline. (Note: This game did not involve the coach's school.) A player for one team ran down a long rebound along the end line, jumped into the air and saved the ball back inbounds. An official blew the whistle and said that the player had stepped on the end line before jumping and saving the ball, which would have been a violation had it happened. But it didn't. We watched the play half-a-dozen times and the player in question was several inches short of the line. Now, the ref didn't have the benefit of watching the play six times, but he had a terrific angle, five feet away, and missed it.

Five possessions later, a player missed a jump shot and was banged hard to the floor by a defender. Looked like a no-brainer. Instead, it was a no-call. On it went like this for hours. Odd call after odd call.

I bring this up because it is only 10 days into January and already this has been a lousy month for officials.

In overtime of the Fiesta Bowl national championship game, an obvious, blown pass-interference call tainted Ohio State's victory. Worse, ABC replays of the end-zone call showed the official in question first grasping his right wrist as if to call defensive holding and then suddenly changing his signal to pass interference. There might have been holding on the play, but the tentative pass-interference call was horrible. Ohio State outplayed Miami most of the night, but this was a terrible call at a critical juncture -- and a lousy way to prolong the game.

Two days later the ultimate play in the Giants-49ers NFL playoff game was so badly blown that the NFL had to issue a mea culpa and decree that certain plays will be refereed differently in the future.

These are not isolated incidents. In the sports world, we have reached a sort of crisis in the area of officiating. I would argue that most high-level sports have become nearly impossible to officiate accurately. How do you referee Shaq? Offensive-line play in major colleges or the NFL? Where is the strike zone? In some cases, athletes have simply become too big, strong and fast to officiate by the methods that existed for decades. (Just watch an NBA referee try to run the floor on a fast break.)

There are two basic philosophies on officiating. The first postulates that human error is part of sport at all levels. Officials are human and, thus, they make mistakes. Those mistakes are part of the game. The 1985 World Series and 1989 NCAA championship basketball game, to name just two, turned on officiating errors. (Many more big games have turned on player and coach errors.)

The other theory is this: Let's get everything right. Any mistake is a travesty. Players and coaches who work hard have a right to have their efforts judged fairly and according to the rule book.

I used to believe in the former: No harm in a few mistakes. But at least at the highest levels of sports, video technology has advanced to the point where the smallest error is replayed dozens of times, casting a pall over the event. It's one thing to suspect an error was made, quite another to be certain of it.

Changes are a must: