There are three seconds left. The Virginia Tech Hokies have the ball at the Miami 30-yard line, trailing 38-34. The Hokies need a touchdown to knock off No. 7 Miami and pick up a top-10 road win that could possibly serve as the turning point for Brent Pry’s program, which is off to a 2-2 start to his second season. Hokies QB Kyron Drones receives the snap and takes a couple of hops in the pocket under no pressure. He lofts the ball toward the end zone.
The ball returns to Earth among a mass of bodies in orange, white and maroon. We have no idea who caught it. The announcers are silent. Two officials get together and begin discussing what they saw. Meanwhile, Miami’s Tyler Rowe emerges from the pile with the ball, holding it up in celebration, and runs toward his teammates, storming off the sidelines to join him. It’s a short celebration because while the Canes are dancing, the eyes of everybody else in Hard Rock Stadium remain on the officials, who are yet to signal a call.
Then they do. Touchdown, Virginia Tech. All hell breaks loose.
It was one of the more memorable endings to a game in the 2024 college football season, but it should also serve as an ending that leads to change in the sport. The NCAA Football Rules Committee will meet next week, as they always do in the final days of February, to discuss possible rule changes for the upcoming season. It’s widely expected one of those changes will be what they can do to stop players from faking injuries. One of the proposed ideas is that, rather than sitting out a play, any player who causes a stoppage due to injury should sit out the rest of the series. You know, for player safety.
I don’t know how they’ll rule on that, but I hope they also take some time during the week to review the review process. Particularly the rule that requires officials to make a call on the field.
The chaos that ensued at Hard Rock Stadium probably couldn’t have been avoided, but it may have been mitigated. While we don’t have the transcript of what the officials were saying to one another as they huddled following Virginia Tech’s Hail Mary attempt, it likely went something like this.
Official 1: What did you see?
Official 2: I couldn’t see it. The ball was lost in the bodies. What did you see?
Official 1: I didn’t see anything either.
Official 2: Well, crap, we have to call something. What do we do?
Official 1: I don’t know. Touchdown?
Official 2: Yeah, sure, then we can go to review.
TOUCHDOWN, VIRGINIA TECH!
You may not like the call. You may not agree with it. It doesn’t matter, the refs went about it the correct way. The problem arose when they went to replay, and there was no clear, definitive resolution. The fact the original call was overturned — giving Miami the win — despite this lack of evidence sparked further controversy.
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The refs were put in a mostly impossible situation. While no replay was conclusive, when you piece the angles together, it seemed more likely the pass was incomplete, and nobody ever had full possession of the ball. And, if somebody did, there was a strong likelihood they were out of bounds when they did so. In a sense, the refs may have gotten the call correct, but reached that resolution in a manner not consistent with the rules.
So, change the rule.
Being an official is a difficult job in every sport. Your job is to find things at the margin on the field of play as gifted athletes move at a speed inconsistent with the way humans move in everyday life. Of course they’re going to miss calls. The responsibility of the NCAA Rules Committee shouldn’t just be to placate fans, coaches or the media after one or all of them bitch and moan about something. It should also be to make the job they ask their officials to do easier. One way to do this would be that if you’re going to use replay review for key play calls, stop with the half measure. Stop forcing officials to make a call on the field.
If they have no clear vision of what happened, don’t make a call. Go to replay. Use the technology at your disposal, as major league baseball is doing this spring with an automated ball-strike system. View the play from every angle to make the best possible decision. You won’t get them all right, but that’s already the case. It could lead to long reviews in key situations, which nobody likes, but already happen.
Declaring a Virginia Tech touchdown in this instance didn’t save us from a lengthy review, after all.
And this is only one example. It’s the most memorable one from the 2024 season, but there are multiple instances throughout any season in which officials are forced to make a call regardless of whether they saw the play, and they’re then beholden to that call and now need definitive evidence to overturn their guess.
Some will say going directly to an all-seeing eye in the sky, which is a conference replay center, will lead to cries of conspiracy, but that already happens, anyway. Virginia Tech fans and others believe the ACC overturned that touchdown to help Miami stay undefeated and keep the conference’s hope of getting multiple College Football Playoff teams alive (nevermind that the ACC did get multiple teams in the playoff, and Miami wasn’t one of them). We are not rational creatures, and there’s little evidence to support the idea competition of any sort leads to more rational thinking.
But while this change won’t fix every call, it could help alleviate the enormous pressure we place on officials by taking the onus off them a bit. The technology exists. Conferences have poured resources into replay review centers. Start getting more bang for your buck.
Sometimes, the smartest thing a person can say is, “I don’t know.” Give officials the chance to do so.
