Thought you might find this from today's National Post interesting:
CFL apologizes for 'boneheaded' calls Vicki Hall, CanWest News Service; Edmonton Journal
Published: Tuesday, September 11, 2007 Article tools
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EDMONTON - George Black pleaded guilty on behalf of his officials Monday for dropping the ball on a crucial call in Calgary's 20-17 win last week over the Edmonton Eskimos.
So guilty, in fact, the CFL office plans to issue undisclosed fines to both Glenn Johnson and Jake Ireland for botched calls over the weekend in Edmonton and Winnipeg respectively.
"It's embarrassing," said Black, the CFL's director of officiating. "I'm upset, disappointed and somewhat furious. But as long as we have humans officiating football games, I guess we're going to have the odd mistake here and there."
The mistake in question came in the second quarter with the Eskimos facing second-and-three. Quarterback Ricky Ray found Andrew Nowacki over the middle on a 15-yard strike and the Edmonton receiver took four steps before falling down.
The ball popped out when it hit the grass. Three officials in the area called Nowacki down by contact and declared a first down for Edmonton.
Not so fast. Calgary coach Tom Higgins threw the yellow challenge flag, and Johnson headed under the hood to watch the video replay. He overturned the original ruling, and Edmonton was forced to punt.
"We made a boneheaded call on the Nowacki catch," Black said. "Just a plain boneheaded call. We made a lot of calls that were right, but that one was just wrong."
So wrong, that the entire Edmonton bench went ballistic on the sidelines.
"With these CFL refs, you never know," said Edmonton wideout Trevor Gaylor. "Truly, they're human, so there's going to be human error. But I don't know. I think a Little League ref could have made that call. And on some calls, you're a little less forgiving than others, like judgements calls."
The Eskimos also felt they were robbed on a so-called catch made by Ken-Yon Rambo. The Calgary receiver appeared to trap the ball, but the play was called complete.
Edmonton coach Danny Maciocia threw his yellow flag, and Johnson went under the hood. The referee had only two video angles on the play, and neither provided conclusive evidence that the ball hit the ground.
"If I'm a betting man, I say the ball came loose and the receiver picked it back up," Black said. "But you can't tell on the replay. We tell our guys that unless they see the ball hit the ground, they've got to call it a complete pass."
The Winnipeg gaffe came on a Saskatchewan kickoff when players from both teams fielded the ball at the exact same time before it flew out of bounds. In the rare cases of simultaneous contact, the CFL rule book calls for the kick to be repeated.
Ireland looked at the video replay and gave Winnipeg the ball instead of allowing Saskatchewan to re-kick.
"I can tell you Jake was literally ill," Black said. "He was kicking himself at the hotel all night. Jake is probably our best rules man. He's embarrassed and disappointed in himself."
The CFL issued a statement late Monday apologizing to fans for the errors.
"Officiating in the CFL is a very challenging job and our officials are true professionals," Michael Copeland, the league's chief operating officer said in the statement. "However, professionalism requires the constant pursuit of improvement and accountability when mistakes are made.
"We owe this to our fans and to the game."
In spite of video replay failing twice in the same weekend, Black believes the technology has improved the game.
"We're only a year-a-and-half into this stuff," he said. "We're trying to get it right, as you know. But there's still going to be some tweaks here and there."
Edmonton Journal
vhall@thejournal.canwest.com- with files from Scott Petersen
© CanWest News Service 2007
An Argo-Cat fan