Mark and Pataskala, thanks for posting about this. I felt the same way, but didn't want to be one of those guys that overanalyzes every coach/player's facial expressions. But I especially was disappointed in the reaction of TT. He's a senior and a leader on this team. And he had absolutely no outward expression toward the official on that call. None.

That they have indeed done.  The cynical part of me wonders if they did it in response to all of the negative national press this received early Wednesday morning.  In the end it doesn't matter I guess; the MAC did admit the errors.

Guys, I watched the game.  he was livid at the sideline ref...not livid enough for a penalty or to throw the yard sticks like Woody.  he should have been down the sideline on the guy who made the call.  A 15 yarder was definitely worth it there.  After all, this was"the most egregious error" in the history of college football:)  A much harsher reaction was warranted there.

And, yes, my bad it was #80 not #8.

A lot if people are talking about how bad the calls were for good reason;however, the calls cannot directly be connected to Ohio losing the game. The score was 30-3, not 28-27. Other teams have overcome bad calls and won ball games. We did not. We were out played and beat fairly soundly. I'm a lot more worried about a lack of an offense and a mediocre running offense and defense than majoring on the bad calls,

A perspective that wouldn't cape the league office in so much honor would be that they had no choice given how obviously wrong those calls were.


Did they have any other choice..what would the reaction have been if they'd have tried to insist that those calls were correct.

Interesting in this morning's on-line messenger.  Tettleton says his lack of reaction was because he himself did not realize where he was at when he threw the football.

Not saying anything publicly would have looked INCREDIBLY WEAK...equivalent of covering one's eyes and saying 'you can't see me.'

It's like in the workplace.  Everyone knows who's a stud and who's a laggard--even if no one vocalizes.

It's also like in life.  We all recognize guts and we al recognize lame--even if no one vocalizes.

Here, anything other than full, outright acknowledgement would have been lame.

It wasn't a choice between deny, admit or no comment; it was a choice between deny and admit (since no comment would clearly have been tantamount to denial).


Wanna see this in action:  Try being involved in a controversy in NYC and see if making no comment is taken as no comment or as denial.

 ie safety.  All scoring plays are reviewable according to the rule book.

 

A safety is reviewable, however the penalty is not, which caused the safety.  As outlined above, and per my post to this that night.  Kind of a catch 22, and you see VERY few scoring plays that are caused by a penalty.

It seems to me that the penalty and the safety are two different things.  The penalty was intentional grounding -- not reviewable.  The safety was because of a misjudgement that the intentional grounding had occurred in the end zone.  That, it seems to me, should have been reviewable because that was the scoring play.  My guess is that most competent crews would have done exactly that -- reviewed whether or not the pass was from the end zone.  Finding that it was not, they would have enforced the initial grounding penalty and not the safety. 

Years ago I took a course in athletic officiating at Ohio.   At that time there was an obscure rule in the rule book which the professor of the class referred to as "the elastic rule of the official."  What it said, in essence, was that if none of the other rules applied to a situation, the official could do what was best in his judgement.  I remember the professor specifically talked about a situation, which I think he had encountered as an official, in which a waterboy had tripped a player running down the sideline with the ball.  The player landed on his face partly out of bounds on the opponent's 40 yard line.  The official awarded a TD to that team because there was no one in his judgement who was going to catch up with the tripped player without the interference from the waterboy.  Perhaps this not exactly analogous to the situation we are discussing, but it does show that officials have some leeway in interpretation so that a totally unjust application of the letter-of-the-law doesn't get in the way of a common-sense fair ruling. 

2011 game between Florida State and Miami. See the 3rd paragraph from the bottom. Exact same situation: FSU QB throws a ball near his own goal line. Call on the field is intentional grounding in the end zone for a safety. The replay booth challenges and overrules the field officials' call that the throw was from the end zone and the safety is taken off the board.

I don't disagree with that, except that the call absolutely was an egregious error. The consensus is that this call was one of the worst blown calls in college football, ever. The referee was standing on the 2 yard line, the QB was standing on the 4 yard line, the referee was looking right at the QB when the ball was thrown, the referee admitted that he did not have any awareness of where he was on the field when the play occurred, and the referee admitted that he only considered where the QB was after the play was dead when he called it a safety.

If that isn't an egregious error, I want to know what is.