Ticats GM asking for American Referees.......

I disagree to some extent.

Some TiCat penalties ARE within their control and deserved (ie, stupid roughing/late hits after the play or a hit clearly out of bounds).

Others are not deserved. The questionable spearing and non-call for offensive pass interference (yet defensive called) in the B.C. game leading to the go-ahead TD (plus the questionable non-call for screening against B.C. early in the game in the Lions end zone… DB was clearly not looking back for the ball when he disrupted the play yet no call, and even the non-call on the Cats 2-point conversion attempt… it appeared the B.C. defender was draped all over the back of the Cat receiver)

Also, when other teams commit fouls but they’re not called. Most obvious… Dunbrack clearly being held in the open field which gave Calvillo the precious extra seconds to throw a (winning) TD strike. (funny how the refs found the flag in the following Al’s game and hit the same offender OLineman Mudge with holding).

IMO, we’ve had questionable calls (made and not made) that have had a major influence on the outcome of close games.

That should not happen.

*** Maybe Cats could run the now famous Subway commercial on the video board of the apologizing football referee… a none too subtle jab :slight_smile:

IF? We hear every year about the training CFL officials go through and every year we (the CFL) seem to have the same issues…I say we explore the Malinese option.

:wink:

We’re making light of it, but the league has a huge problem with the quality of the officiating. Lack of consistency is the big issue. It’s hard enough for new players to sort out what they can and cannot do. It really seems to be nothing more than a guessing game most of the time. In my humble opinion the quality of the on field product(league wide) has been in decline for several years now, and one (just one) of the contributing factors is weekly examples of games where one or more questiobale calls has a direct outcome on the final result.

I’ve got no problem with Marcel calling these guys out. It really can’t get any worse…

Apparently people have short memories. When the CFL had teams in the U.S., they had to use American referees as well, and it was not considered a huge success. In fact, I recall several media outlets complaining significantly that the American referees were very inconsistent on their application of the CFL-unique penalties. Some (other media) responded that the American referees just needed more training on the CFL game.

To me, this indicates that we'd be no further ahead by hiring American refs. They'd need more training --- so why not just spend that training on the existing pool who are already up to speed on the CFL?

I actually don't think there's much at all wrong with the officiating. Yes, it's sometimes inconsistent, but it's so much better than it was 5 years ago, and video replay has also helped.

I think Marcel hasn't been in the league long enough to remember the poor performance of the American refs back in the early 90's.

Spencer...

I'm a big fan of our 'Caretaker' and comfortable with our GM as well, and I'm very disappointed with some of the 'brutal' calls in the last two games (the non call of holding on the third Mtl TD, the 'spear', and the (McColman like) pass interference call among others...
HOWEVER, it was griping against officials that did in Al Bruno - the more he complained - the more often offensive holding was called in key situations at key times.
CFL referees are NOT professionals and they don't react to criticism like professionals.
After a hard day of work teaching or greeting people at Wal-mart they ref CFL games for their entertainment and nothing is more entertaining than getting in a few licks of their own at the expense of those who taunt them.

Bob and Marcel, we're with you 100%, but try to overcome the penalties the best you can and don't make things worse. Oh, and while I have your attention, let's give that kid from Hawaii a start and see what he can do with the personnel that you've worked so hard to accumulate.

Editor's Note:
It occurs to me that not all of you are old enough to remember the Al McColman pass interference call at Exhibition Stadium that decided an 80s playoff game between the Cats and Argos.
CFL fans of both teams who were at the game believe this to be the worst officiating call of all time.
McColman, who ironically, was a teacher in Hamilton at the time, was the recipient of multiple death threats, and was subsequently pulled from working the Grey Cup Game.

Exactly, remember that game against the Argos last year when there was face mask called on a ticat, and the replay clearly showed it was the Argo player with his hand on the ticat’s face mask.

This problem with officiating has been around for some time.

A Vancouver Province sports columnist wrote the following on Monday, and I agree with it 100 per cent. That referee meeting stuff drives me around the wall and is ruining a lot of games. The officiating in this league is brutally bad and has been getting worse. I watch all the CFL games every season and so many good ones just get bogged down constantly by the non-stop picky penalties and the referee discussions.

"Note to Commissioner Cohon: Mark, when a CFL game lacks the offence that the Lions-Ticats game did, it makes it an even longer, more boring night if the officials are throwing penalty flags all game and debating more than 50 per cent of them in summit meetings as if they were discussing global warming. There must be a way to reduce the number of penalties called. And there should be some way of getting to the resulting yardage lost/gained because of them quicker. After enduring drunken louts in the stands, there’s nothing worse than having to endure the officials being a big part of the entertainment. It means the game wasn’t. And that’s never a good thing."

I agree with MD and his calling out of the officials they have been making these type of calls for a few years now maybe the league should alow the CFL coaches to be able to challenge a brutal call like in BC with karikari defensive pass interference.But i like the other idea of an official up in the press box who can overturn a field call it would.nt be that hard. with todays technology . When the ref conferes with the one who made the call the press box referee could maybe page the head ref and say yes or no to a call

As to the one-sided number of penalties against the 'Cats: we are studying this issue closely.
Caretaker...As a fan of the Cats for many many years, I am glad to hear this issue is being looked at closely by the Ti-Cat Brass. It is long overdue, and speaking about it in the open IS the right thing to do. Yes the players have taken far too many penalties...however their has also been far too many calls against the Cats that were very openly bad bad calls. The latest example of course was in B.C. When the Reff's calls directly effect the outcome of a game..as they did last week. Something has to be done. This is not the first time this has happened... Vidio replay has been a big step in the right direction. But it does not go far enough..it should include penalty calls as well in challanges... from Coaches. Subject to perhaps a 15 yard penalty..for a blown challange from a Coach, so the game does not turn into a 4 hour format. Glad to hear you folks are starting to speak openly about this Bob.

No offence?

412 yards for BC and 393 for Hamitlon? 805 yards of offence!

It thought it was an exciting game.

But yes, the penaltites were the only damper, but most of them were warranted IMO.

Where is the “WHAT HE SAID” emoticon? :thup: :thup:

I dont agree with Marcel because the I feel the Cats are getting screwed. I watched the Calgary game and Copeland made a catch on the field, they called it a catch, they reviewed the catch said it wasn't a catch.

Copeland caught the ball, controlled the ball, landed and then lost the ball. Apparently, the ref had enough evidence to over turn the call on the field which I absolutely disagree with.

No offence?

412 yards for BC and 393 for Hamitlon? 805 yards of offence!

It thought it was an exciting game.

But yes, the penaltites were the only damper, but most of them were warranted IMO.
[/quote]
It was arguably the most boring CFL game I've seen in years, despite the close score. There was no flow and the constant parade of flags, challenges, and on field gatherings of the refs turned a competitive game into a snore fest. If this is what the CFL has become, this is one fan that will find better ways to spend 3+ hours....

A 66 yard romp by Lumsden as he broke tackles and ran over defenders, a punishing hit on Clemont by Armour that stunned the receiver and left a nice welt on his neck, numerous plays by Moreno, more hits by Cox and Armour another 30 plus yard run by Lumsden, a 19 yard gain on 2nd and long, deep in our own end on a screen to Dickerson, timely intercpetions by Barranechea and Moreno.

There were many more very entertaining plays during that game that I enjoyed. More so than most games IMO.

Yes, the delays were there, but if you want reply, that's what you get.

BTW, that run by Lumsden is the longest rush to date this season.

From this website, "[i] Hamilton, Ontario – The Hamilton Tiger-Cats would like to congratulate running back Jesse Lumsden for capturing the Canadian Football League’s Offensive Player of the Week and Canadian Player of the Week awards after his remarkable performance against the B.C. Lions last Thursday.

Facing a Lions defence that had surrendered just 131 rushing yards in its previous three games, Lumsden exploded for a career-high 158 rushing yards on 11 carries – an average of 14.4 yards per carry.'[/i]

I respect your opinion, and as Chuck Swirksy says, that's why you have chocolate and vanilla.

Sorry to digress, now back to the topic at hand.

On this issue Desjardins is an idiot. The American refs will be paid the same as a Canadian ref right? Same lack of perks? Same lack of job security? Same lack of full-time employment?

US refs are not inherently better than Canadians at refereeing games. It's just that their situations (more pay, full-time employment, etc), are more conducive to producing a slightly better level of officiating.

And what happens when the US refs fall a of perfection? Is Desjardins going to start the call for Lithuanian refs? A more useful proposal would've been to propose ways of upgrading the quality of officials here (e.g. clinics, working with technology, better pay, etc.)

American refs for the CFL. What a shameful suggestion.

An Argo-Cat fan

Wow, its very encouraging to me that the management is looking into this. I agree with GM & caretaker that ‘increasing the talent pool’ is a possible way to improve the quality of the referees and thereby the game itself. However, assuming someone at the Tiger-Cats office is reading these threads, you may want to look at some of the ideas these posters are tossing around.

For instance the idea of an off field official constantly monitoring plays with the ability to “flag” plays that should be looked at again is an excellent, innovative idea. I’m sure if they invented football today, this would be standard actually.

Also, no matter how much we increase the ‘talent pool’, and even if we have an off field refree viewing things, referees will still be human and will thereby still make mistakes. Therefore I think increasing the circumstances in which a play can be reviewed is the easiest, fastest and most effective way to increase the quality of calls on the field because human error (the real problem) is increasingly factored out this way. Unless perhaps Bob secretly has some old Red Hat computer whizzes working on artificially intelligent cyborg referees incapable of making mistakes, in which case, I dare say we bring on and welcome our new robot referee overlords.

[quote=" A prime example is the offside call where our lineman’s hand was about 2 fingers offside. I found that to be absolutely ridiculous. That was one of the things that a ref with any sense would have let go since it had zero effect on the play.

.
[/quote]
I think I know the call you’re talking about.And with ALL due respect :wink: ,
the ball was on the one and we were called offside.
What I found ridiculous was our lineman couldn’t figure out that his fingers must be on or behind the goal line.
I don’t blame the ref on that one.

The refs will warn players if they are if they’re lining up off side but that one… :roll:

If it wasn’t BG , I apologize. :oops:

Good post Spencer! You have approached this subject very objectively. Hockey Basketball and Baseball officials are hired full time. But their schedule includes more games. This is a problem for both the NFL and CFL. Their officials have full time jobs to go home to. Unless we get a CFL Europe (:lol: :lol: :lol:) league the CFL couldn’t afford to pay them a full time salary. That and the suggestion of hiring American Refs would boost the costs to each team.

Hmmmm, how much would you like the owners to raise ticket prices for one of those two options? :wink:

Hold on here…You may be onto something here! :lol: :lol: :lol:

How about we recruit refs from Bejing China? If they screw up we send them back to a firing squad! :wink: :wink:

Now theres an incentive to do better!

Maybe it's time we made more of a push to bring in American GMs to improve the quality of the clubs. Canadian GMs just can't seem to cut it. And while we're at it, how about American cheerleaders? Their b**bs are bigger. And shrink the field and go to 4 downs so the American refs won't have to adjust to our game; we'll adjust to them.

:twisted:

An Argo-Cat fan