A month ago, I wrote about the ball-spotting problem in college football, one of the most underreported yet significant flaws in the sport as an on-field product. This severe deficiency continues to receive very little attention from media outlets, at least when viewed through the prism of saturation coverage.
“The media” can be a vague and generalized reference, but it is meant to refer to the collective ecosystem in which a wide range of outlets exist across various platforms (principally television, radio and blogs). These outlets can (and do) choose to focus their attention on one topic if they think it will become a conversation piece, or when the conversation is essentially thrust into the media realm, giving said outlets no real choice but to continue the debate.
We have not yet come upon a moment in the existence of football when “the media” have seen fit to launch an urgent discussion of ball-spotting.
However, Saturday’s Michigan State-Michigan game — which was instructive and revealing for so many different reasons BEFORE the unforgettable, one-of-a-kind conclusion — should lead college football to drag the NFL into a new age of game administration and officiating.
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One person — one great American — has banged the drum on the topic of ball-spotting longer than I have. Tim Hyland, a gifted essayist and commentator who is one of the best thinkers in the college football community, has said for years that college football officiating is based on complete guesswork when ball-spotting is the issue at hand:
Reminder: Spotting the ball in football is complete guesswork. @TheStudentSect
— Tim Hyland (@IntelligentCFB) September 26, 2015
Hyland has been appalled at the extent to which a fundamentally central part of the sport — MARKING WHERE THE DANG BALL IS SUPPOSED TO BE — is so regularly uncertain and inaccurate. He is and has been 100-percent right in his analysis, and he has been 300-percent right in speaking up about it… and not shutting up.
It was hoped that Saturday’s Michigan State-Michigan game would get the media to devote more attention to ball-spotting issues. However, the endgame play — which I will always call “The Immaculate Implosion,” due to the “Immaculate Reception”-style nature of Michigan State’s catch-and-run sequence — overshadowed the absolutely awful officiating in the contest.
The officiating affected both sides, so it’s not as though one side had a unique gripe over and against the other. However, the depth of the severity of the ball-spotting crisis (accompanied by the spectacular failure of the replay booth to overturn a horrendous targeting call on Michigan’s Joe Bolden) represented such a pronounced failing that the sport cannot stand idly by before the 2016 season begins.
In the third quarter of Spartans-Wolverines, viewers were treated to the rare, uhhhh, errrr, “spectacle” of seeing goal-line reviews on three straight plays. Anyone watching the game could tell that the on-field refs and the replay booth had no clue about each of those plays. One of them might have been easy to determine, but two of those plays involved piles which just swallowed up the ballcarrier — there was no easy way to make a ruling on those plays, so for all the things the officials did poorly in Ann Arbor on Saturday, those goal-line calls were the least of their mistakes. In a stack of 15 bodies, it’s not easy to make a call.
In the cover photo for this story, you can see Jameis Winston of Florida State being down before reaching the goal line in the Rose Bowl against Oregon. With a clear field of vision, a referee or replay official can easily make a call. However, when a pile engulfs the ballcarrier, it’s well-nigh impossible for officials to make a determination. The runner might have been down a few inches short of the goal line in real time, but by the time the pile gets cleared away, the ball might be on the goal line (or vice-versa).
What can expedite the process of replay reviews for ball-spotting? It’s simple: We need advanced technology to monitor the location of the ball at all times. Period.
College football and the NFL, both billion-dollar industries, should be able to get someone to put a microchip inside a ball, or put a laser on the goal line or at the first-down marker (or both), to make a very difficult job a lot easier for officials.
We put a man on the moon. We have cured all sorts of diseases. We have created the modern hand-held do-everything device, with voice technology and internet capabilities and image-creating capacities the likes of which Don Draper and the America of the 1960s never could have imagined.
SURELY, WE CAN SPEND A FEW BUCKS TO PROPERLY SPOT A STUPID FOOTBALL.
This is not a point which requires great elaboration or in-depth examination. It is something which obviously cries out for a modest degree of technological innovation, something well within the ability of smart and talented people to create (and make a few bucks off as a result).
That this hasn’t happened is somewhat surprising (but only somewhat, because college football can be really stupid sometimes).
What would be a real shame is if something DOESN’T happen before the 2016 season.
Lasers. Microchips. Sensors. Whatever Tim Hyland wants on this matter, college football needs to provide when next season rolls around.
It’s long past time to get ball-spotting right.
