From "Referee" magazine:
Was it a Bat or a Pass?
Referee Describes Play that Sparked a Rule Change
By Jon Bible
If you saw the Peach Bowl on New Year’s Eve, you saw a great athletic feat, one that has spawned a lot of discussion among officials. As the referee on the game, I’m offering this insider’s account of the play and its aftermath.
To pick off a North Carolina pass, Auburn’s Karlos Dansby leaped at a 45-degree angle. While airborne, he grabbed the ball with both hands extended and, knowing he was near the sideline and would land out of bounds, brought it back to his chest and then threw it, basketball-style, to Dontarrious Thomas, who was inbounds and in front of him. Thomas was then tackled. Because I trailed the quarterback as he rolled out and was in line with his pass, I saw what Dansby did. My first thought was "Lord, what a play!" Then I saw a flag: Line judge Mike Liner ruled that Dansby threw an illegal forward pass to Thomas even though Dansby had never "caught" the ball because he did not touch the ground with it inbounds (as described in NCAA rule 2-2-7c).
The crew huddled. I’d love to say I knew instantly how to rule, but I’d be lying. In 32 years of officiating, I had never seen that happen (nor had the other officials) and my wheels were spinning. Questions and opinions flew fast. Can someone "pass" a ball without "catching" it? If that wasn’t a pass, what was it?
One official proposed returning the ball to North Carolina and penalizing Auburn for illegally batting a ball forward in the field of play. Others agreed with the bat theory, but noted that while a pass is in flight, any player eligible to touch it may bat it in any direction (9-4-1a).
Still others felt that whether or not Dansby "caught" the ball, he did "pass" it, and because the defense cannot throw a forward pass, Auburn should keep the interception; we would be ruling that Thomas did "catch" the ball but we’d assess a five-yard penalty against Auburn.
Being the genius I am, I kept thinking it was not one of those times when I could just wing it; I had to do something. After we kicked things around for what seemed an eternity (actually two minutes, 15 seconds – I later timed it), Mike and I agreed that while Dansby had not "caught" the ball, common sense said that when he controlled the ball, brought it to his chest and intentionally threw it to Thomas, he "passed" it.
So what did I say when I turned on my microphone to explain things? I said that Dansby intercepted the ball, then threw it forward, so Auburn would retain possession with a five-yard penalty for an illegal forward pass. As it turned out, that was one wrong statement, one correct one and one guess. That isn’t so bad.
When I visited North Carolina Coach John Bunting to explain the ruling, he wanted the ball back. I told him the one thing I was sure of was that wasn’t going to happen, and that the penalty was the best deal he was going to get. I told Auburn Coach Tommy Tuberville that I had good and bad news: he had the ball, and while I wasn’t sure I was doing the right thing (yes, I admitted that), I was penalizing him five yards. He said the five yards didn’t matter if he got the ball.
The more I thought about the play as the game wore on, the more sure I was that I was wrong. I felt it should have been a bat, thus no penalty. When we got to the dressing room, I was taken aback when Big 12 Supervisor Tim Millis applauded us. Other officials, I know, can appreciate how bizarre it feels to try to convince your boss that you’re wrong on a play when he insists you were right!
Tim has since told me his thought process. When the play occurred, his first impulse was that Dansby had thrown a forward pass. He noted that, sitting in the press box, he could hear some media and even fans saying that Dansby had done so, and that their only question while we huddled was why it was taking us so long to decide something so obvious. He found himself hoping we would rule as we did, so that we would not have to try to explain to millions of people in the stadium and on TV that what they had seen had not happened.
But then he began wondering whether that was really a pass or a bat, so he started plowing through the rulebook. He reread the definition of "catch," which pointed him in one direction, but he also saw that rule 2-19-1 says that "passing the ball is throwing it" and 2-2-5a says that a player is "in possession" of the ball if he is "firmly holding or controlling it." In other words, one can "possess" and thus "pass" a ball without first "catching" it.
So we were right. Pretty much accidentally, I admit, but I’ll take it. Better to be lucky than good, I’ve always said.
Later I asked other officials what they thought. I was also repeatedly asked about the play when I attended a convention for baseball umpires. Everyone was polite, but their bottom line plainly was, "Boy, did you screw up." A month or so later, about the time I knew I was guilty as charged, Tim called to say he had just come from the NCAA Rules Committee meeting. Amazingly (to me), the committee ended up agreeing that there was a rules conflict and that, given the existing definitions, we were right. The definition of "possession" has been changed for the 2002 season to provide that future Dansbys must return to the ground inbounds to establish possession, meaning that if it happens again, our play will now be ruled a controlled bat – legal interception, no pass, no foul.
It was fun to have been involved in a funky play that generated a lot of talk and precipitated a rule change. Even better is having gotten the play right, even though I can promise that at the time none of us, especially yours truly, would have been willing to bet the farm that we had.
Jon Bible is a referee in the Big 12 Conference and a former NFL official. He has worked three other bowl games in addition to the 2001 Peach Bowl.
