No college football for me today

MLB is not a zebra dominated game. Probably less than one percent of the games are impacted by poor officiating.

If this play was not the worse use of replay in NCAA history, what was?

I didn’t say if it was a catch or not.

I just said, it was ruled one way on the field. It appears that it was a call that a team could ask for a review. Officials went to the video and overturned the call.

Lots of sports fans have been yaking about wanting the ability for multi angle, longer than a second reviews of some calls.

Maybe time to get rid of the video reviews and just go with the stripes call on the field?

Yes, indeed. Bad calls have been a major part of sports from the beginning. Look at what the NFL has done to address the bad call last year. Players, coaches, fans all agree that the “solution” is worse than the problem.

As for fans being upset about bad calls, that’s also been part of sports from the beginning. Fans love to complain about refs.

I couldn’t disagree more. The home plate umpire who calls balls and strikes has a major impact on literally every pitch and makes a huge impact on games. Of the major sports, I think hockey has the least official interference.

I also thought the targeting call was a little shakey. 14 point swing due to the zebras. Being physical used to be an advantage. These days the more physical team usually gets punished because the zebras don’t like hard hits.

I don’t disagree with this, you’re probably right.

That’s what this thread is. A fan or at least sports fan who is upset about bad calls changing the outcome of a game. Why would this be any worse than any of the other times? Why is he expected to just grin and bear it? Why is he expected not to be upset or want things to improve?

I didn’t say Ohio State fans shouldn’t expect competent officiating. I said:

Since I know human officials make mistakes, sometimes in my team’s favor and sometimes not, I’m not going to make myself upset over it. And as I pointed out, the solution is often worse than the problem. This call got screwed up because of instant replay, which is in place to mitigate human error.

I will say this…no officiating crew from either of the participating teams’ conferences ought to be in charge of officiating the game.

That an SEC crew got to officiate a bowl game in which an SEC team was officiating was bad.

I understand human error. This was beyond human error. How did that SEC official see a bobble that nobody else in the world saw? The ref also violated the number 1 rule. Evidence has to be conclusive. He totally ignored that part. They told us that replay would eliminate bad calls. In this it caused one.

It’s not just this game either. Every year the game becomes more zebra dominated. Which makes it less watchable.

Never the less. They have lost me for the rest of this year. Maybe next year too.

Do you think something nefarious happened?

I agree, but I think football is in a tough place. When it was just refs making all the calls with no technology, fans freaked out when they screwed up and demanded instant replay. With instant replay comes more rules, more timeouts, more overturned calls, and a less watchable game. The NFL is struggling to find the right balance.

I’m not ready to say that but I’m 100 percent sure that LSU and the SEC would rather face Clemson than the Buckeyes. Two huge things happened that cannot be explained.

  1. The rule of only over turning a call if conclusive evidence is shown was ignored.

  2. The SEC official claims that he saw a bobble that nobody else saw.

It’s pretty shakey stuff.

I think some of the issue here is that it wasn’t a single call. Dobbins not maintaining control to the ground on the TD reception. I think that’s a silly rule, but by the letter of the rule it was correct. It still made OSU fans upset.

Then the targeting call. Again, by the letter of the rule sure. Also a questionable rule. There was no obvious malicious intent, the QB dropped his helmet after Ward began to wrap up, and I don’t know what Ward could have done differently. You also have pretty obvious defensive hands to the face on Chase Young during the same play, as his helmet was half off of his head. Again, you can make the case the exact ruling was correct, but it still made OSU fans even more upset.

Then there was the no catch call. This is the one I don’t think can be defended. Caught the ball, took four steps, then fumbled. Ruled a fumble recovered for TD on field. Reversed by a single replay judge for unknown reasons. 7 points literally taken off the board by a horrible call. Those 7 points are more than the final margin of defeat. Sure, Clemson could have still come back to win, but it’s still a TD off the board.

I’ll admit it. I’m an OSU alum and fan. I’ve had to deal with plenty of dumb losses on the part of OSU over the last decade or so. Games that OSU didn’t show up for. This was not one of those. This was a game in which OSU came out strong against a great opponent, dominated the majority of the game, but ultimately lost by a margin easily covered by bad calls. The sting of those other games went away pretty quickly. OSU could only blame OSU. This game feels different.

1 Like

Nope. That’s not it. You expect to struggle a little against great teams. The reason the Buckeyes didn’t score more points is because Clemson is really good. The reason they are not in the championship is because of the worst use of replay in the history of college football. They didn’t play a perfect game, but that doesn’t mean they didn’t get screwed out of a national championship.

There was one bad call and several questionable calls leading up to it. OSU could have scored more points. They also made their share of mistakes (punting penalty, wrong route on wide open receiver) and defensive errors (although those seemed to happen after Ward was ejected). In the end I feel OSU was the better team and played a better game. The better team did not win. The team with the most officiating mistakes against them lost.

Yes, they need to at least follow precedent so teams know what to expect.

So could have Clemson. Clemson didn’t score a single point until after the targeting call. Both teams scored the number of points that their opposition allowed them.

BTW. OSU did score more points, but the zebras took 7 of them off the board and nobody knows why.

It sucks, but as a sports fan, I try not to let ■■■■■■ officiating get to me. I know that’s a lot easier to say when it’s not my team getting screwed. If it makes you feel any better, I’m a Minnesota Golden Gophers fan, which is hard to admit.

1 Like

I don’t. Because it has made the game far less entertaining. If the game is not entertaining, there is no reason to watch. They lie a little as well. My favorite examples:

Lie number 1) A call must be conclusive to be overturned by replay. How many times have you heard the man in the booth say " I can see this call going either way." If that is the case, the call must stand because it’s not conclusive. They frequently overturn calls that are nowhere close to conclusive. The OSU call is probably the worst ever example of that.

Lie number 2) A defensive player has the same right to the ball as an offensive player. Anybody who has watched more than one game knows that’s a load of crap.

1 Like