OK, different sport, but along the same lines.
I was keeping the clock for the SEC basketball tournament a few years back. In most D1 NCAA games, the official's whistles are tied into the timing system (Precision Timing). When the whistle blows, the clock stops. The game timer (me) must then manually stop the clock within two seconds, or the clock automatically restarts, assuming the stop was an error.
About 8-10 minutes into the game, the head of SEC officials comes to the table and asks me why I keep stopping the clock for a few seconds, and starting it again. Needless to say, I wasn't. We watched the officials and the clock CLOSELY for the next few minutes, and figured out what was happening: One of the officials was talking to the players in the key, telling them to stop the hands, the pushing, etc. Problem was, he was barely taking the whistle out of his mouth, and the air from his speech was blowing across the top of the whistle and activating the timing shutoff.
Next time out, we had to give him a little speech about moving his whistle away from his mouth, or shut up!
