After Review

This past weekend was the one where Princeton had six different teams being their seasons, with some ups and a few downs. 

The two biggest ups came from the women's rugby team and the men's water polo team, both of which brought their head coaches their first wins with their programs. While TigerBlog was going to start there, today, he decided upon further review that he had to talk about technology today. 

See what he did there?  

With apologies, those stories and more from the past weekend can wait a day. Technology was just too big a story in college athletics this past weekend. 

TB wonders how many video reviews there were in all of the Princeton athletic events that happened this weekend. There were enough in the two field hockey games he was at in North Carolina that he lost track. He's sure there were some in the other sports as well. 

By the way, don't take for granted that these reviews just happen. The explosion of replay has fallen to the multimedia departments in schools around the country, and those people have more than handled the task.  

Officiating is tough. Theoretically, the ability to do reviews should help. TB is just not sure. In fact, he thought of this as he was switching between two events Saturday night in his hotel in Chapel Hill.  

On one channel, you had US Open tennis without line judges, only computerized out calls. 

On another 20 channels, you had college football, where games are stopped for measurements after the ball is spotted by the side judge, without any technological advance from when teams originally got a first down for gaining 10 yards. Chains, after a hit-or-miss spot? Still? 

Which is better? Good question. 

If you pay attention at all to anything, you saw Saturday night what can happen when the human element is eliminated from sports. Cans of worms worse than a bad call come spiraling into the night. 

TigerBlog is referring obviously to the end of the Western Michigan-Michigan game at the Big House. As you know by now, Western Michigan seemed to have won the game 12-7 when a Michigan Hail Mary attempt sailed past the end zone as the stadium clock went to 0:00.  

In the entire history of the world, dating back earlier than the dinosaurs, such an ending would have stood without controversy. Only since the advent of video review has this become an issue. And so what happened? The replay officials reviewed it, put one second on the clock and watched as Michigan converted this time. Final: Michigan 13, Western Michigan 12. 

Ah, but this only satisfied the people who wear Maize and Blue. To the rest of the world, this was clearly a travesty. And why wouldn't it be? As anyone who watched the game could see, the clock on the NBC broadcast reached 0:00 before the WMU player touched the ball. 

Game over.  

The Big Ten officials would later put out a statement about how there were two clocks and how the replay booth only saw the one that had 0.4 seconds on it when the ball was touched. As a result, the clock had not yet reached all zeroes, and so one second was put back up. 

This led the questions of 1) why were there multiple clocks and 2) which clock is official? This is from the NCAA football rulebook: 

Game Clock. Playing time shall be kept with a game clock that may be either a stopwatch operated by the line judge, back judge, field judge or side judge, or a game clock operated by an assistant under the direction of the appropriate judge. The type of game clock and the location of the game clock operator shall be determined by the game management. The game clock operator may be located on the sideline or in the traditional press box area. If the clock operator is in the traditional press box, it is recommended the location is between the goal lines. This location shall be shielded from public interference and shall afford a direct and unobstructed view of the playing field. The game clock shall not display tenths of seconds. 

Do with that information what you will. By the way, one of the complaints that TB and so many American fans have about professional and international soccer is that only one person has the official time, as opposed to the stadium scoreboard. Part of American sports is that everyone in the building knows how much time is left and knows what 0:00 means. 

TigerBlog is now entering his second term on the NCAA Division I men's lacrosse rules subcommittee. He was part of the committee when video review first came to the sport, and he can tell you that what happened in the game Saturday night could not happen in men's lacrosse because the stadium clock is official and it can only be used for replay purposes if it is burned into the video feed (the only exception is new for 2027 and involves using a stopwatch to determine a 15-second count to be able to challenge certain plays, which is nowhere near what happened the other night).

As TB has said many, many times in committee meetings, the last thing you want is for an outcome of a game to seen illegitimate, and that's what the Western Michigan-Michigan game feels like. This takes TB back to his original question? Which is better? The impact technology has had or living with the human element? 

Video review has not done what it was supposed to do, which is to correct egregious errors. Now? There are too many reviews and there are too many head-scratching outcomes. 

At the first video review at Princeton-North Carolina field hockey Sunday, TB had this to say: 

"After review of the play in the field hockey game, Michigan football has been awarded another play." 

It got some laughs, though it's not the kind of joke you want if you're in charge of the rules.