Good Call

If you're an NFL fan like TigerBlog, then you remember the good old days, back when every coach, player and commentator praised the officials after every game.

Remember those days? Every call was right. There was never any controversy about anything, whether it be a judgement call, the administration of the game, none of it.

Everyone lived in blissful happiness, knowing full well that no matter what, the game would never be decided by an officials' error, since they didn't make any.

TigerBlog gets the whole ref controversy. It's easy to blame the replacements.

And now everyone is looking for it on every play in every situation everywhere.

TB's theory is that if the real refs came back but nobody said they were the real refs, everyone would still say all the same things about them as if they were the replacements.

Take last night's game between the Packers and Seahawks. The last play of the game might not have been a great call or even the right call, but it was hardly the worst call of all time.

Offensive pass interference is never called in that situation. And Golden Tate had a lot of the ball and never let go of it, even if the Packers' M.D. Jennings had more of it.

Did that call give the Packers the loss? Hardly.

Maybe if Aaron Rodgers threw for more than 223 yards. Or, to all those offensive linemen who couldn't wait to tweet, maybe eight first-half sacks were part of the problem.

It's not possible for the replacement refs to come in and be exactly as good as the regular ones, simply because they don't have the experience of officiating games at that speed with players that size with that much scrutiny. It takes more than three weeks of regular season games to make that happen.

But are they as horrific as they're being made out to be? No, they're not.

The uproar over last night's game is predictable, and it does deflect attention away from the fact that in a 60-minute game, the powerful Green Bay offense rolled up 268 yards of offense while the defense forced exactly zero turnovers against a rookie quarterback in his third game.

Oh, and for the New England-Baltimore game, how would real refs have made anything different on the game-winning field goal, which, by the way, was 1) good and 2) not reviewable.

Officials are such an easy target.

The ones who officiate college men's lacrosse have endured a great deal of screaming and yelling and ranting and anything else coaches could come up with, and it's not going to get any easier for them this coming year.

The new rules in men's lacrosse that were recommended last month by the rules committee and then tweaked and finally formally adopted this week include a brand-new challenge for the refs.

To address the issues related to pace of play, the rules committee came up with the idea of using the stall warning as sort of a pseudo shot clock.

Under the old rules, when the refs decided that the team with the ball was making no effort to go to the goal in a reasonable amount of time, a stalling warning was issued. At that point, the team with the ball had to keep the ball in the box or else it would become a turnover.

The problem with that rule, though, was that it has become harder and harder for the defense to force the turnover in that situation, as offenses have gotten way better at playing keepaway (partly because of new stick technology) and defenses have had to choose between trying to aggressively force the offense out of the box while risking overplaying and giving up a layup or sitting back passively.

For TigerBlog, those situations could be fascinating, though the balance had certainly shifted from fascinating to happens-too-often.

To get around this, the rules committee came up with the new rule. Once a stalling warning is issued, the refs will immediately begin a 30-second countdown, the first 20 seconds of which will use a timer and then the final 10 seconds of which will use an arm countdown.

If the team with the ball does not get a shot on goal in those 30 seconds, it'll be a turnover. A shot on goal is defined as a goal, a shot off the pipe or a save by the goalie (the shot off the pipe doesn't count as a statistical shot on goal, by the way).

The rule change no longer requires the offensive team to keep the ball in the box during the 30 seconds after the stall warning is issued.

As for the last two minutes, the team ahead is no longer required to keep it in the box, but the rule about getting a shot on goal in the 30 seconds will apply once a stall is called. This could be a huge advantage to a team up by one who gets the ball with fewer than 45 seconds or so remaining, since it could probably just spread the field and kill the clock.

The idea is to prevent teams from simply sitting on the ball without instituting a shot clock, which could, among other things, provide a financial/staffing issue for schools.

The problem is that so much of the game will now be decided by the officials' discretion as to when to issue the stall warning. In the past, that was a problem too, and the defensive coaches are already yelling "stall" after the offensive team makes more than five passes.

Now, though, the timing of calling the stall has direct implications on what happens in the next 30 seconds, so when it's called becomes a much bigger deal.

And then there are the mechanics of the situation, with issues related to starting the 20-second timer, teams not knowing how much exact time is left on the countdown, what will happen when the ball goes out of bounds but the offense retains possession (the timer runs, the arm countdown stops).

Still, it's a good step in the direction of taking some of the problems related to the pace out of the game.

TB still thinks a bigger problem revolves around substituting, with offensive and defensive specialization.

And he thinks ultimately there will be a shot clock in college lacrosse.

For now, it'll be interesting to see how the refs respond to the new responsibilities placed on them.

In case you haven't noticed, people love to rip on the refs.