Officiating is an integral part of any sport. The great thing about officials is they are human. Just like the coaches, players and fans. Yes they do make mistakes and occasionally miss calls. 99% of the time slow motion replay will show an official to be correct on a close call. If he is not correct, most of the time it takes the slow motion replay to prove him wrong. A luxury the official does not have on the field. He must make a split second decision based on the angle he had on the play. Believe me the angle is everything. You can have four different angles and have four different calls.
As for the officials causing Miami to lose, I hardly think so. There were a lot of close calls/no calls in the game that went for either side. The no call on a Miami player early in the game when he hit an OSU player in the face. Should have been a 15 yard penalty and ejection from the game. Late in the game a Miami defender grabs an OSU receivers jersey stretches it out yet no interference is called. Why were these missed? I can’t explain it other than an official can’t see everything. There were 131 plays during the game not counting the ones that were repeated because of penalties. With 22 players on the field for each play that means there were at least 2282 opportunities for calls by the officials. Say they missed 5 calls. That means they missed .001% of their calls. Do you do as well in your chosen hobby? How about in your chosen profession?
Something else that factors into the outcome of the game is the performance of the team is play calling, turnovers, missed blocks, missed tackles, poorly thrown passes, running incorrect routes, running backs going the wrong way, broken plays, etc. Miami had 5 turnovers, 3 fumbles and 2 ints (at least two of these deep in their own territory), to two ints by OSU. Miami was also sacked 4 times to OSU’s one. Miami only had 6 penalties for 30 yards compared to OSU’s 9 for 49 yards. Look at this and you would think the officials were pulling for OSU. Time of possession OSU 31:27, Miami 28:33.
How many times were plays sent in that resulted in a loss? How many times were the incorrect plays sent in? How about OSU’s fake field goal? Was that a good call? Kick that one and the game doesn’t even go to overtime.
When you look at mistakes made in play calling, execution, penalties, etc it is easy to blame the officials for the outcome of a game. That way the players, coaches and fans don’t have to take responsibility for their judgments during the course of the contest. And that seems to be the problem with most everything in sports today. No one taking responsibility for their failures.
By the way, I have no love for either team that played last night. Both could have lost for all I care.
As for the ACC officiating this year, I agree it was sub par. I thought the quality of the calls were about the same as usual. However the mechanics and game management of the officials was very poor. When this happens the crew looks bad and the calls appear to be even worse even though they may be good calls. I have written a letter to John Swofford and Tommy Hunt at the ACC expressing my opinions. Have you?
