https://www.expressnews.com/sports/columnists/mike_finger/article/With-football-officials-under-fire-who-wants-14537013.php?src=hp_totnMike Defee was disappointed, and he wanted us to know it.
That name might not ring a bell, but if you’ve ever watched a Big 12 football game, you probably recognize Defee as the league’s marquee football referee. And even if you don’t know him, you’re familiar with the type.
Giant biceps. The chestiness of a mall cop. The gravitas of a vice principal. The authoritarianism of a homeowners association president.
Last Saturday, a half-hour before Texas and Oklahoma kicked off their rivalry game at the Cotton Bowl in Dallas, Defee laid down his version of the law. After both teams engaged in some jawing and mild shoving near midfield at the conclusion of warmups, Defee threw a flag and announced an unsportsmanlike conduct penalty on all players on both teams.
He was in charge, dagnabbit. And later, when a pool reporter asked Defee why he went to lengths that he admitted were unprecedented, the veteran official took on his most grandfatherly tone.
“What happened out there,” Defee said, “is an embarrassment to everyone.”
If this seemed a tad over the top, considering the relative tameness of the incident in question, well, you have to understand: officials are under more stress than ever these days.
When they miss a call (and calls naturally are going to be missed), they hear it from everybody. When their mistakes are egregious (and there have been some particularly egregious ones lately), they’re replayed over and over again, on high-definition TV screens and in viral social-media GIFs.
And if it appears referees, linesmen and umpires are growing more defiant and more resentful by the day, it makes sense.
Who would want those jobs, anyway?
According to those who track such matters, fewer and fewer people want them every year. The Texas Association of Sports Officials has been talking about a looming shortage of high school and junior high referees in all sports for almost a decade now. Last summer, University Interscholastic League executive director Charles Breithaupt said the average age of an official in Texas was 58, and he predicted “the game will suffer” without an increase in applicants.
An often-cited reason for the declining numbers is verbal abuse from parents and fans, and that’s probably as big of a reason as any at the youth level. But there’s another phenomenon at play in colleges and in the pros.
As the use of instant replay has become ubiquitous, leagues are vowing more stridently than ever to get all of the calls right. But officials are still missing big ones, and when they do, the criticism is (perhaps justly) harsher than ever.
Start with the Big 12. On the same day Defee made a giant show of what a no-nonsense enforcer he was going to be, his conference counterparts down the road in Waco completely bungled a simple ruling that cost Texas Tech a victory.
In the first overtime, Baylor’s center snapped the ball off his backside, and Tech recovered what was a simple fumble. But the Big 12 crew ruled that the center had committed a snap infraction, which resulted in the play being called dead, and Baylor retaining possession. The Bears scored and then won in double-overtime.
The Big 12 admitted the next day that the officials had made a mistake. But from Tech’s point of view, the damage had been done.
In that case, at least, the error was limited to a single play. But when Detroit tried to hold off Green Bay on Monday Night Football, the Lions were left screaming about three bad calls that aided the Packers’ comeback.
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As is often the case, one involved a missed pass interference penalty. But on the other two, Lions defensive lineman Trey Flowers was flagged for illegal-hands-to-the-face penalties despite replays showing that he actually was grabbing a blocker’s shoulderpad in both cases.
On Tuesday, the NFL conceded one of the calls was wrong, while sticking by the others. But again, this did little to assuage the doubt of those who wonder if their teams are getting a fair shake, and it didn’t ease the friction between players and officials that continues to grow.
The NBA has dealt with this for years, and a new system involving a coach’s challenge isn’t likely to fix it. After all, the NFL thought that the embarrassment of the missed call in the Rams-Saints playoff game could be solved by making pass interference reviewable.
Instead, those in charge of those reviews have responded with what might delicately be referred to as a thumbed nose, or a raised finger. For the season, fewer than 20 percent of the challenged calls have been reversed, and from Week 3 to last Thursday, an incredible 20 of 21 pass-interference rulings were upheld.
For all intents and purposes, the challenge doesn’t even exist. If this is the officials’ way of standing up to the criticism that seems to come at them from every angle, the rest of us will have to deal with it.
And if we don’t?
Chances are, Defee will let his disappointment in us be known.
