Referee decisions in litigation (article)

Just plain stupid. The ROC don't permit protests of errors: "state and national bylaws did not permit protesting the outcome of a game because of an official’s ruling on the field." End of story. Sad people who think the court's should be used to fix all of life's unfairness, regardless of any legal basis. It's good that Texas school districts have so much excess money in their budgets that this one can affort to waste it on frivolous lawsuits.

 

As much as I hate to say it, this is Oklahoma. I pray that my wife doesn't hear about this (we're in a 5A/6A area) because she'll be in a rage about proper spending of money and the fact that her program gets no budget for music, instrument repair, new instruments, travel etc. but there is money for this.

 

Oh even better . . . at least it wasn't Idaho or Utah -- the only two states that spend less than OK on public education . . . (and where the heck did I get Texas from?!?!?)

 

Texas is football crazy, so it's not a reach to think that it could happen here. That big headline had the "Oklahoma" hidden in the middle.

 

Yes, but… This wasn't a problem with an official's ruling, but rather with the application of the law consequent to that ruling. The ruling itself was correct, and even if it weren't, it would not be protestable. But this is akin to awarding a penalty kick for dangerous play.

Now, I don't know whether under the specific ROC an error of law is protestable (and of course, getting the courts involved is utterly ridiculous), but I think it's an important distinction and one that seems to have been glossed over by the article (and for all I know, by the competition organizers as well).

 

I think you're parsing language that isn't there: the (incorrect) ruling on the field was that the touchdown did not stand because of the penalty. They are in court because they are outraged that there is no protest available. (I'd actually love to see the court paperwor -- it would probably be entertaining.)

 

Right, and that would be an error in applying the law, not a mistaken factual ruling. The violation was correctly called, but the appropriate remedy was simply a five yard penalty on a subsequent kickoff or extra-point attempt. No facts are in dispute here. The only question was whether the law was correctly applied, which it clearly was not.

You may be right that I'm parsing language that isn't there—since I know pretty much nothing about football, and am totally unfamiliar with the ROC in this case, I'm admittedly just transposing the framework of soccer onto this situation. But if we apply the same distinction between factual rulings (not protestable) and law application (protestable) as we have in soccer, I think it's pretty clear that this would be, on its face, a potentially protestable error. Like I said, it's similar to awarding a PK for an IFK offense. Right ruling, wrong restart.

 

The lawsuit alleges that even though there were no protest provisions, there is langauge in the FFHS regs that says that "State Associations may interecede in teh event of unusal incidents that occur before, during or after the game officials'jurisdiction has ended or in the event a game is terminated prior to the conclusion of regulation play." And they are arguing that when the OSSAA Board denied the appeal, it was arbitrarily and unreasonably misapplying the its own rules and the FHS rules.

Last week, teh court granted a temporary injunction that prevented the next round game from being played last Friday so that there can be a further hearing this Thursday at which the court will decide whether to grant an injunction.

 

It's not like they got a judgement call wrong - they completely misapplied the rules.

Implicit in the rule that does not permit protesting a game because of a refeee's mistake is the understanding that the referees will call the game according to the rules. If they had, for instance, awarded 4 points for a successful field goal, would that be allowed to stand?

 

Having read a number of articles in Referee magazine on this very topic, I feel confident that the courts will not grant this appeal. Eventually. There is settled case law that says that the courts will not rule on the application of rules in sports contests. I believe the concept is the need for finality. Right or wrong, the fact is that referees make mistakes, just like players and coaches. Never broadcasters, however! To allow litigation over referee decisions in a sporting contest is contrary to public policy.

I believe it was Florida that had a similar case about seven or eight years ago, in which the courts did try to get involved, issued injunctions, the case went to appeal, etc. A total fiasco. It only made the protesting school, the game officials and the courts look foolish. In the end, the officials' decision was upheld.

In response, NFHS added the following language in its soccer rules, Rule 5, section 1, article 2. "Protests of NFHS rules are not recognized." Yes, that is preceded by "State associations may intercede in the event of unusual incidents that occur before, during or after the officials' jurisdiction has ended or in the event that a contest is terminated prior to the conclusion of regulation play." The intent of the wording here is almost impossible to parse. E.g. How can such incidents occur "during... the officials' jurisdiction has ended...." Note also a few sentences earlier, "The officials can only correct a decision so long as the game has not been restarted." So, you screw up, the game restarts and, by rule, there is no longer anything that the officials can do. I would argue, perhaps against interest, that referees making a mistake on the rules is not an "unusual" incident. Far too common, in fact. I don't know whether the football rules were similarly amended but I'm pretty sure that the "no protests" language was inserted in all NFHS rules.

Probably off on a tangent, but I think similar in the sense of indicating just how important high schools view obtaining total justice, I once asked our state high school association staff "Just how bad would a field have to be before [we] said that the just can't use it?" The response was that, well, we did have a very small high school that was playing basketball in the "cafetorium" on all weather carpeting. They did shut that down, but that was the only such case they could recall.

 

Cal South Soccer Association has a provision in its rules that if an entity (club, team, player, etc) sues the association in civil courts before all internal avenues of appeal have been exhausted then that entity is suspended from all activity within the organization until the civil case is resolved. By personal experience I know that has the effect of stifling lawsuits. In our situation, one of our players was ruled eligible by the State office but ineligible on the field by the tournament committee. He (and thus the team on which he played) were declared ineligible on Saturday (thus forfeiting a win), eligible on Sunday (in time to play for another win), and then of course ineligible on Monday (thus forfeiting the Sunday win). By the time the appeals (all the way to USYS national tournament office) were finished, it was too late in the week to have any effect on the next weekend's games.

 

I mentioned this situation today to a friend of mine who is a retired long time college baseball coach, and who has done some umpiring. He, liked me, regretted seeing this go to the courts. Next time the ruling or application may be just a little less clear, but still the aggrieved party takes it to court. And it goes on and on and on..... This is known as the "slippery slope." We need to learn that there are many things in life that are not "fair", but we have to live with them. It will happen to these high school kids when they are in their 20's, 30's, 40's, etc. And after all, it's just a game.

 

This definitely isn't something that the judicial system should be involved in, but I do wonder why OSSAA doesn't have a provision for remedying a rule misapplication that has a measurable impact on a game. For our comparison, what high-level competition in soccer doesn't have a provision for protest? We all realize that the protest mechanism is often misused because some coaches think it gives them the ability to replay a game based on a decision they don't like, but this case is a legitimate case of rule misapplication. If you've ever officiated football, this is really a pretty mind-blowing error for a playoff crew. It's not the court's place to make any decision regarding this game, but OSSAA really ought to have a provision in place for a remedy in situations like this.

Granted, the complaining high school is hardly a sympathetic victim...fans and coaches swarmed the field after the game and one official was apparently physically assaulted. If I were the decision-maker here, I'd acknowledge the error, order that the game be reset to the state it should have been following the play in question (Douglass leads 25-20 pending try with five-yard penalty to be enforced against Douglass on either the try or the kick-off at the option of Locust Grove) and then forfeit the game to Locust Grove due to the conduct of the Douglass coaches and fans following the original game.

 

La Rikardo, I would say that high school, at least at the state administration level, has an attitude that the goal of high school sports is to just play the game. It really is 'just a game.' The largest fine our state gives is for taking your team off the field before completion of the game. The outcome of the game, therefore, is not as important as the student-athletes just playing. Yes, they give trophies to the winners but achieving perfect justice in the conduct of the games is not really on the radar screen.

Taking this from gridiron football to futbol, I'm thinking about the DC United player who is being suspended for six games for pushing an AR after the game over a ball in or out of touch decision. The video shows that the AR was correct, that the ball was, in fact, completely across the line. (The throw-in for DC United's opponents led directly to a goal.) So imagine that this is a high school game and the video shows that the AR was wrong. Should the state association have a process to restart the game at that point? I don't know about where you are, but, if that were so, we'd never get the season finished because of all the games being replayed.

 

That's a poor parallel to the original situation in question. Everyone agrees what the infraction was; the referees obviously erred in the punishment meted out for it, in all probability reversing unfairly the result of the game.

 

Well, in the opinion of at least one DC United player, the AR's decision did change the outcome of the game.
So where do you draw the line on what "in all probability" changed the result of the game? The team that wants another shot at winning the game?

 

Many competitions allow protests after the fact only if officials make a mistake on the rules, but not on officials' judgement calls. A ball in or out of play is a judgement call, and should stand regardless of followon evidence. A misapplication of the rules should be corrected.

 

Two problem with using the DC United play as an example is the call was correct and the subsequent throw in didn't directly result in a goal. There were two changes of possession before the goal.

 

http://media2.kjrh.com/html/pdfs/footballdecision.pdf

Request for injunction denied; temporary restraining order lifted. some nice language about why courts are not the place to resolve these kinds of issues.

 

This result is the expected one. It is easy to file a lawsuit. Convincing judges that they should interfere with youth or school sports competitions is very rare when the leagues establish their own (internal) rules for protests.

 

What he's saying is, the situations are different because in the case of the football game, the referees made the correct call, but gave the wrong punishment for it (removing points from the scoreboard, instead of moving the ball 5 yards on the next play).
In the DC United case, the referees made the correct call, and gave the correct restart. It didn't change the outcome of the game, because everything that happened was correct.

I don't see this as a big deal in either direction, by the way. It's a misapplication of the laws (rules?), which is usually sufficient for FIFA/UEFA/etc to grant a replay without much hassle (and certainly without the need of a lawyer). I'm guessing there are no provisions in high school football for misapplications of the law? If there were, this would have been solved/replayed already, I assume.
On the other hand, it is just high school athletics. How much money does the school stand to lose by not advancing to the next round? Probably less than they're spending on lawyers at the moment.

 

Okay, you are right about the throw-in example. Let me substitute a referee using a drop ball restart after a stoppage for an injury, instead of letting the goalkeeper, who had the ball in her hands when he stopped play, restart with an IFK. Clearly an error in the rule application. Replay the state championship game for the error?

 

Just out of curiosity, does anyone know how the mis-application played out in the Oklahoma game? Did the aggrieved coaches have a screaming fit about the wrongly denied touchdown? What I've heard about high school football coaches in Texas is that they would be on the field chewing on the referee for twenty minutes if they knew the crew was making that bad of a call. Did any of that happen in that game?

 

That is still not as blatant as taking points off the scoreboard.