That’s right, the time of year you fear and dread: football season has arrived. It’s been a quiet year so far, so I haven’t felt compelled to comment on anything quite yet. Especially with so few surprises: the Redskins are woefully underachieving with a staff of overpaid superstars (this year the focus is on the coaching staff!) and over-the-hill has beens, the Hokies are rolling over lower-tier opponents, it’s business as usual at USC, and Tennessee won a few games before folding and disappointing all the people they’d convinced.
But now things have gone haywire. Nuts. Crazy. So out of this world that a person with an opinion would be brain dead not to comment.
I’m a person with an opinion. I’m not brain dead. So here we go:
Oklahoma and Oregon played an exciting game this weekend. Oregon came from behind to win 31-30 on the strength of an onside kick and ensuing touchdown.
Except according to the Oklahoma school president, OU didn’t lose that game. Of course, they didn’t win it either, so the game should just be stricken from the records. It would be a shame, he says, to let all that fine effort by the boys of OU go to waste because of the awful events that led to their downfall. Just, whatever you do, don’t blame the football players of OU. They didn’t lose, oh no, it wasn’t their fault.
How could this be? What was the awful events that could possibly lead to the erasure of the results of an entire college football game, as if it never existed?
Two questionable calls were made by officials which replay now shows were wrong. The onside kick was touched by an Oregon player within 10 yards, and thus should have been a penalty against Oregon. Instead, Oregon was given the ball. On replay review, where the official doesn’t have the technological capability of slowing or freezing the frame, it was determined that there was not enough evidence to overrule the call on the field. Later, a pass interference call was made against OU, setting up the winning touchdown. Replay shows that the ball was tipped, and pass interference shouldn’t have been called. But the in-game review, again without benefit of the ability to slow or stop the frame, the ruling was not enough evidence to overrule.
Based on these two calls, OU’s PRESIDENT is calling for the NCAA to invalidate the results of the game, for the PAC 10 to abandon its long-held rule of having PAC-10 officials at nonconference home games, and basically whining and crying and complaining to the world. OU’s head coach is doing the same whining, saying that the officials have committed an unforgivable crime against his team. The school is even threatening to back out of its obligation to play Washington next year as part of a home-home agreement (the game at OU has already been played).
Before diving into the stupidity of the remarks of these two men, let me first examine the lessons they have now imparted upon the developing young men under their charge to develop and educate. First, life is fair, and when it isn’t, crying and whining will help solve the inequities. Second, it is OK to blame your failures on the failures of others. Third, an early regular season football game between non-conference foes is the most important thing in life - more so than the graduation rates of the football players (and thus their education by an institution of higher learning), more so than ensuring compliance with the NCAA’s rules regarding player work, and more so than seeing to the general needs of the student body (ok, so now I know why college administrations are so hard to deal with - they really don’t care about the students!) Finally, if you don’t get your way, you can just pout, pack up your things, and go home, and shirk your contractual obligations. So much for lessons of "your word is all you have, so always keep your word."
Okay, so on to the reality of things. Life ain’t fair, Oklahoma. And if you haven’t noticed, on neither questionable play was the result of the play a score for Oregon. So I have a lesson for you: football isn’t about what happens to you. It’s about what you do, and how you react to the things that happen to you. Some commentators, while still lambasting Oklahoma for their resemblance to a two-year-old who lost at tiddly winks, are wrongly stating that these errors had a deciding effect on the outcome of the game. They did not. What had a deciding effect on the outcome of the game was Oklahoma’s inability to: (1) deal rationally and separate from emotion with the consequences of those calls, and (2) Oregon’s ability to capitalize on the opportunities. That is what these calls amount to: unjust opportunities given to Oregon. Oklahoma still lost that game by not playing better defense. Oregon still won that game by putting the ball in the endzone on a play without the aid of the referees.
So I say shame on you OU. The President of the university apparently doesn’t have anything better to do than to act like the Director of Athletics, and doesn’t deserve to be given responsibility over the entire school. He should resign - reacting this way to a football game is reprehensible behavior. This is a man responsible for the educations of tens of thousands of young people, and this display of poor judgment will only result in whining and crying by fans and students for years as well as the application of these lessons by the students as a model for proper behavior. Only his resignation has any hope of reversing the damage he has caused to the maturity levels of those students. Besides, he’s not much of a college president that gets in this much of an uproar while quietly ignoring the problem of his football players’ graduation rates and their flaunting of NCAA rules regarding gifts (see the scandal over players’ "jobs" at a car dealership where they got paid, but never bothered to actually WORK.) As for the coach, it’s his job to get indignant over these things. For about 12 minutes. Then he’s supposed to turn around and tell the team that it’s their fault (coach and team) for not stopping Oregon on the last drive, and for not playing well enough that the game was close enough for the come-from-behind. Then he’s supposed to get them ready for next week. Whatever happened to one at a time? Now it’s one at a time, plus the games we got hosed on. Here’s to betting OU loses next week because they weren’t adequately prepared because they spent the week bellyaching.
Not only all that, but OU’s president should be forced to resign because his behavior has encouraged other schools to begin bellyaching about nothings. USC is now complaining about ABC’s revealing that their quarterback uses a certain signal to indicate that he sees the defense in one-on-one coverage. Two things wrong with that. First, big deal! I highly doubt that USC’s opponents were watching the broadcast hoping for tidbits on the opposing team. So that deals with the problem of secrets damaging THAT game. Second, (and USC’s coach agrees with me on this one), watching game tape will reveal if a quarterback regularly uses a certain signal in certain situations. ABC may have just made this job easier for future opponents, but I guarantee it’s something they all do anyway. In fact, this is how it came up - in a pregame conference the announcers talked with the USC quarterback and showed him game film of another team’s QB constantly making a signal on his helmet where there was single coverage. Thus if the QB uses the same signal from game-to-game, I think he’s being foolish. As USC’s coach says, there’s a million ways to signal. It’s no big deal, but somehow it became newsworthy because the USC administration felt that it was obligated to complain to ABC. A complaint that wouldn’t have been made, I think, if OU hadn’t set the precedent of administrations complaining to the world.
Sorry for the long rant, but that’s my position on this issue. Shame on OU. Shame on USC. (And [insert most extreme sentiments of displeasure here] on that [insert expletive synonym for moron here] who felt that an appropriate response is to threaten the lives of the ref and his family.
And the refs? Keep it up guys, getting your job 99% right is more than these yahoos can brag about.
