End of Game Solution

OU President David Boren wrote a letter to the Big 12 Conference calling for the OU v. UO game Saturday to be wiped from the record. I'm going to go one step farther, although Boren is on to something. Big 12 Commissioner Kevin Weiberg says "There is no provision under NCAA or conference rules for a game result to be reversed or changed as a result of officiating errors, nor do I believe there should be." That's fine. Unfortunately, he's wrong. There should be. The Oregon players shouldn't be saddled with the burden of losing a game that they didn't get credit for losing. Anything Oregon does will be done with an asterisk, even if the asterisk is just a few of the AP voters putting OU ahead of Oregon in the rankings. Also, Oklahoma shouldn't be jobbed out of a W because the officials decided to magically concoct a scenario to turn it into a loss in the last 75 seconds.

So, my solution is two part, one for end of game situations and one for general replay. I'll start with the last-minute fix first because it addresses Weiberg. There should be a provision and it should be this: game outcomes can be changed under the following scenarios:
a) the last play of the game is reviewed and it is revealed that a player scored (or didn't score) and
b) a play that would have changed possession and allowed the team that would gain possession to run out the clock by taking a knee is reviewed and it is found that the wrong team was awarded possession
I'm open to suggestions and rewordings, but that is the jist. So, an example of a) would be the OU v. TTU game last year. Red Raider RB Taurean Henderson was said to have scored on the last play of the game, as time expired. Thus, Texas Tech was awarded a win, whereas Oklahoma would have been victorious if Henderson had been stopped. Henderson didn't score, but it wasn't as obvious as the eggregious call this weekend. The Big 12 reviewed the call and said that there wasn't conclusive evidence to say the wrong call was made, although given all the questionable calls in that game (the phantom 15-yard facemask being one) I'm skeptical of any officiating in Lubbock. A hypothetical would be if Notre Dame is trailing USC by 4 points with 5 seconds left at the USC 40. Brady Quinn throws a hail mary and it is ruled to be caught by ND WR Jeff Samardzija in the end zone, giving Notre Dame the win as time expires. The Irish rejoice. However, the NCAA finds that Samardzija didn't actually catch the ball, that it had hit the ground but they didn't notice, somehow ... maybe the officials didn't have a good angle. Unfortunately, USC would be awarded the win retroactively.

An example of b) would be the play in the OU v. UO game on Saturday. A hypothetical could be the following: in another SEC shoot-out, LSU is leading Georgia 7-3 late in the fourth quarter. Needing a TD, Georgia mounts a drive down to the LSU 15. On 3rd and two with 55 seconds left and no timeouts, Georgia runs a play-action fake and throws for the end zone. The LSU DB catches the ball but is ruled to not have possession before going out-of-bounds. On 4th and two, Danny Ware busts one up the middle and Georgia takes the lead, 10-7 with the subsequent extra point. LSU, not surprisingly, is unable to move into field goal range and goes home Saturday night on the short end of a 10-7 decision. However, subsequent review of the incompletion on 3rd and 2 reveals the LSU player had possession of the ball and the correct call was actually an interception. The TD would be wiped off the board and LSU would be awarded a 7-3 victory because they would have just been able to take a knee and run out the clock, with Georgia unable to do anything about it. Sure, it assumes that a team can correctly execute a kneel down, but I think that's pretty fair, especially considering the alternative. If you want, bring the teams back on a bye week and play out the kneel downs, if the Georgia coach demands it, but I doubt he'll want to go through the trouble.

My issue with replay is that the replay officials don't have enough at stake to do a good job. What happens if the replay officials give Oregon the game? A suspension for one game ... nice, that seems reasonable (catch that sarcasm?). I don't even know if a year suspension is enough. The people with something at stake are the two teams. So, I want to bring them into the process with the NCAA as the oversight. There will be three votes on each replay, one for each team and one for the officials. Majority rules. The caveat, every voted on play is reviewed by the NCAA. If the officials vote wrong, they are suspended for a year, an entire year, not just the rest of the year. If either of the coaches votes wrong, they receive a five-game suspension or whatever penalty is deemed reasonable. The penalty has to be enough to keep from letting the internal bias cloud judgment about what is actually "right" based on the rules. Would Belotti sacrifice 5 games for the possibility that his team would have a chance to have the ball after the onsides kick? Maybe, but not if he didn't know that the officials were casting their vote to give Oregon the ball. Coaches wouldn't just blindly vote for their team because they'd quickly get buried under suspensions, and if the officials are doing their job, it won't be of any use to them, because they'll be outvoted 2-1 anyway.