Forget for a moment the question of whether the calls in the USC-Utah game were good or bad. That’s an issue fans will always debate.
What is also worth noting is the explanations officials give for their calls. This is an important and often overlooked dimension of the craft of officiating and how we evaluate officials’ performances.
Let’s use an example from last season. Purdue beat Tennessee in overtime in the Music City Bowl because a Tennessee runner was ruled to have not reached the goal line with the ball on fourth down. Replays showed that the Tennessee runner had in fact reached the goal line before he was down. Why was the call allowed to stand, then?
The officials had ruled that forward progress was stopped, not that the knee was down before the ball reached the goal line. Because the forward progress rule was invoked, the play could not be reviewed and, consequently, overturned.
There was an obvious solution here: The officials simply should have stated that the runner’s knee was down before the ball reached the goal line. Had the officials given that explanation, the call would have been reviewable and overturnable.
Transfer this point to the roughing-the-passer call against USC in the fourth quarter versus Utah. If the 15-yard penalty was kept in place, there obviously was something within the ruling which kept the penalty in place. The officials therefore needed to use a technique which would have allowed the 15-yard penalty to be revoked upon further review. This is something one can add to Trojans Wire’s discussion of the penalty with Mark Rogers at The Voice of College Football:
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