It was bad enough that the on-field officials in the 2020 Rose Bowl made a horrible call of offensive pass interference against Wisconsin’s Danny Davis late in the fourth quarter. It was bad enough that a simple play — a pick play — was completely misinterpreted. It was bad enough that a defender was able to drive into Davis, instead of Davis driving into the defender, and get rewarded for it.
It was worse that a longtime Big Ten college football official, now a rules expert for ESPN (among other duties removed from on-field officiating), defended the obviously bad call which helped Oregon gain a 28-27 win over the mistake-prone, turnover-plagued Badgers in Pasadena on New Year’s Day.
See the guy in the cover photo for this story? That is Bill LeMonnier. He is a very familiar face to Big Ten fans because he officiated Big Ten games for roughly a decade and a half. He has consulted on ESPN broadcasts for a few years as a rules expert. The people who do what LeMonnier does ought to be able to exercise good judgment, which is more important for any official in any sport than technical knowledge of the rule book.
Does that strike you as a controversial assertion? It shouldn’t. Judgment DOES matter more than rule book knowledge — not in the sense that rule book knowledge is less important (it isn’t), but that rule book knowledge means very little without the prudential judgment which can apply rules wisely. Judgment matters, for instance, when a 50-50 play involving a fumble occurs. The ref might think the runner is down, due to his observation of the play and his application of the rule book, but the ref has to know that he needs to let the play unfold so that the defense can return the fumble and get the benefit of a touchdown if it turns out the runner actually fumbled.
Having the judgment to not whistle the play dead matters more than knowing when a runner is down by contact. That is just one example of why rule book knowledge, as hugely important as it is to the job of officiating, matters less than knowing how to make a critical analytical judgment of a play… a play such as the one late in the Rose Bowl.
Look at the play:
An “expert” really told me the WR was wrong because he didn’t “stop” his route or “spin and get away from” the defender who reached out & grabbed him first 😶 pic.twitter.com/UbwsbFHJSd
— Warren Sharp (@SharpFootball) January 2, 2020
You and I can look at the play and conclude that the Oregon defender reached out to Danny Davis first. However, let’s be generous here. Let’s be charitable and say that Davis reached out his arms to also engage the Oregon defender. Even if you are being generous with your interpretation, the worst you can say about Davis is that he was engaged in two-way contact with the Oregon defender. NO ONE — not one person — can look at the video of the play and yet say that Davis initiated contact AND was the sole creator of contact in the play.
Well… except Bill LeMonnier, who put all of the burden on Danny Davis to not do anything, and to have avoided all contact on the play. LeMonnier was the “I AM VERY INTELLIGENT” man in the Matt Bors cartoon from “The Nib.”
It’s bad enough that the on-field officials couldn’t discern that Danny Davis did not initiate contact. It is bad enough that the on-field officials looked at that play and determined that Davis, somehow, created the force and movement consistent with a pick play. That’s awful.
Yet, it is so much worse that a consultant and rules expert who has officiated for a long time processed all of this from the comfort of a press box, afforded the luxury of immediate replay technology, and STILL backed the bad call on the field. When a person in a position of influence — held up as an expert — can’t get a basic call right, we can get a greater understanding of why officiating, the system of officiating, the culture of officiating, and the reality of replay review, are all broken.
Joel Klatt of FOX Sports agrees, by the way:
Officiating/replay in CFB is totally broken.
— Joel Klatt (@joelklatt) January 2, 2020