Miami's Crazy Win Against Duke Shows How College Football Officiating Is Broken

To the surprise of just about no one, the Atlantic Coast Conference announced Sunday that its officials had missed four calls (note: that's a lot) on the miraculous final play that gave Miami a victory over Duke. Said officials were suspended for two games, and the ACC all but told the Blue Devils that they actually won the game.

The most egregious mistake can be seen below. Despite looking at the replay for nine minutes (note: that's a lot of time), the referees somehow neither saw nor realized that this Hurricanes player's knee was down:

Picture from Duke's official website during the return. Hi-res image. — Adam Rowe (@BlueDevilLair)November 1, 2015

Of course, this is not a one-time, one-game problem. College football officiating is broken, in at least two repairable ways.

First, the job is difficult—not to mention a part-time one. That doesn't excuse mistakes, but it does help explain them. What other multibillion-dollar industry treats mission-critical employees like disposable temps? By failing to fully professionalize their officials, conferences are pretty much ensuring they'll never employ the cream of the crop.

Now, there's a chance that calls could get better in the future without making referees full-time employees: FOX Sports reports that the NCAA is discussing an NFL-style replay command center to make replay more consistent across college football. That should help a little; at the very least, it might help us understand what targeting is. However, it wouldn't do anything to rectify an even bigger officiating problem, one that has less to do with human resources than with philosophy: namely, that leagues emphasize maintaining calls on the field rather than getting those calls right.

Go back to the Miami game. Everyone watching on TV could see that the player's knee was down, but that wasn't the only thing the officials had to consider. To overturn a call, they must have "indisputable" video evidence. Even though the ACC later ruled that such evidence did exist, the fact that on-field rulings are given a near-total benefit of the doubt clearly weighed heavily on the officials' decision-making, seemingly paralyzing them. While there was a 99.9 percent chance that the Miami player's knee was down, there also was a 0.1 percent chance that maybe the ball had moved a little bit while in the player's hand. Or maybe the shadows had created an optical illusion.

This is a very dumb way to review a play, but that's what happens when the standard of proof for overturning a call in football is higher than the standard of proof in a murder trial.

Look, there's a human element to all sports, so there will necessarily be a human element to refereeing. On-field calls should be favored, but not overwhelmingly so. If there's a giant pile of bodies and no indication whatsoever that a player actually broke the plane of the goal line, then that call should not be overturned. But why should a referee have to stick with a call that he's 90 percent sure is wrong, just because he made the wrong decision initially? Essentially, the current system says that a decision made at full speed is better than a decision made when a play is slowed down and meticulously studied. That makes absolutely no sense. Let's say you decide to buy a particular house that you thought looked pretty great. If upon further review you find out that it's full of asbestos, do you still go through with the deal?

Of course not, because you are a smart person, not someone living under the absurdity of college football replay rules.

Later on Saturday night, in a Stanford-Washington State game with major College Football Playoff implications, the refs refused to call a fumble after reviewing a play that very clearly looked like a fumble. Even in the NFL, the referees inexplicably called this play a touchdown because it was called a touchdown on the field. This is madness. If anything, replay should be used more extensively in college football. Miami wouldn't have even needed its crazy lateral play without a previous Duke touchdown that was aided by some brutal pass interference calls. Penalties are not reviewable because they are "judgment calls," and that's a fair point, but why not give referees additional, slowed-down angles to allow them better judgment? Why couldn't those calls at least have been challenged by Miami, the way a limited number of line calls can be challenged in tennis?

Refereeing will never be perfect, but it doesn't have to be this bad. Forget "indisputable." There should be one standard for college officials—full-time and well-trained, preferably—to consider when they review plays: What call is most likely to be correct, based on the best angles possible? Anything else leads to endings like Miami-Duke.