Thursday, Nov. 05, 2009

Point-counterpoint: Should conferences suspend game officials for blowing a call?

Statesman sports editor Mike Prater is a Harris Poll voter and a Heisman Trophy voter. Columnist Brian Murphy is covering the Broncos throughout the 2009 season. Each week, they discuss a different topic in our Bronco GameDay section.

Today: Should conferences suspend game officials for blowing a call?

Prater: Murph, I'm a little disturbed over a new trend in college football - the public execution of game officials. We're not officially killing them off, just their character and their confidence. Fans have always had the right to criticize officials, and I'm OK with that. Now commissioners from the SEC to the WAC are raising the stakes by suspending officials. Why - to expose them as poor employees in a profession that's already overly scrutinized? Most employers don't suspend an employee for making a mistake. Why college football? Nobody died. They made a mistake. Write a private reprimand, put it in their personnel file, coach 'em up and move on.

Murphy: Prater, you know I'm not a big fan of officials. You had to listen to me rail about the terrible job umpires did throughout the baseball playoffs. I want the correct calls to be made. I really don't care about anything else - the officials' confidence or their character or their personnel file. We have instant replay for a reason. Don't give me this nonsense about officials being "human." The players should decide games, not officials. Watch a game this weekend and see how many times the officials are clueless as to what happened, just waiting for the replay officials to bail them out because the game is moving too fast for them.

Prater: Clueless? That's a completely ridiculous thing to say. Like 'em or not, officials get 95 percent of all calls correct, and with instant replay that number jumps to 99 percent. Why do they need to be suspended for missing that one call. Not only is it extreme, it's a good way to destroy your work force. If intense public scrutiny continues - and suspensions become more common - the smart ones (the good ones) will find something different to do. Then you'll have clueless.

Murphy: That's because 95 percent of the calls are no-brainers. It's about getting that other 5 percent - the hard 5 percent - correct. It's called accountability and transparency. These calls are worth millions of dollars in some cases. Coaches can get fired over a blown call that costs a team a game. And if fans believe that officials are protecting certain teams (ahem, Florida or Iowa) because it means millions of dollars to the conference, then it destroys the integrity of the game. Let's pay officials more, train them better and hold their feet to the fire.