Sports Column

Pac-10 drops the ball on referees

Fair Game

By kerry eggers

The Portland Tribune, Nov 16, 2007, Updated Oct 30, 2009 (10 Reader comments)

This just in: The Pac-10 has suspended Oregon State Athletic Director Bob De Carolis from watching the first half of Saturday’s game at Washington State.

Not really, but would it surprise you?

The question has been asked in many ways this week, but let me offer this angle: Who’s running the asylum here? Wouldn’t we be better off with the inmates in charge?

It took a De Carolis rant to get Pac-10 Commissioner Tom Hansen off his derriere and administer some discipline to the officiating replay crews whose inexplicably poor judgment nearly cost the Beavers a victory over Washington.

Lest you say, “It’s only a game,” it isn’t. It could have cost OSU a bowl appearance, millions of dollars and, eventually, perhaps some coaches their jobs.

Wednesday’s punishment – the replay officials are suspended a week, the replay and game officials will not be considered for bowls – was about saving face, about Hansen and his underlings going into damage control.

The league ’fessed up on the botched call on the Yvenson Bernard “fumble.” But that was so obvious, it’s hard to believe anybody in the press box could have missed it. Somehow, the man in the booth Saturday in Corvallis – Jim Coyne – and the other three members of the replay crew did.

It’s equally mind-boggling to hear what Dave Cutaia, the Pac-10 coordinator of officiating and one of those in on the league’s review of the case, had to say after lengthy viewing of the game video.

Asked why Washington’s Wilson Aloa wasn’t penalized for punching Bernard after a play near the end of the first half, Cutaia said: “What we saw was people flailing for the ball. It looks like two people hit each other. It’s not really clear.”

Those who watched the replay on the Dam Cam video screen wouldn’t agree.

OSU coaches didn’t quarrel with the ejections of James Dockery and Bryan Payton after a third-quarter fracas but asked the league to reconsider the ejection (and suspension for the first half of the WSU game) of Brandon Hughes.

“We saw the video and felt he was involved in the fight,” Cutaia says.

Sure, if you consider fighting to involve pushing away a Husky player who had his forearm to the throat of OSU’s Al Afalava.

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