How the Pac-12 is using technology for a new age of officiating

You hate the officials.

This week it’s because you’re a Michigan fan, convinced that arch rival Ohio State was gifted an unjust spot upheld upon review (conspiracy!). If you’re an Oklahoma State fan, September’s botched interpretation of a fourth down grounding penalty allowed Central Michigan to beat the Cowboys, and, if OSU wins Saturday, cost them a shot at playoff consideration.

When it’s your team’s outcome at stake, the refs are biased or incompetent — or both. You forget the hundreds of accurately officiated plays and agonize over the outlier “bad calls.”

Bad officiating also leads to some fun football.

It’s a dirty secret ingredient to this sport’s beloved chaos: If the outcome of the 2015 Miami-Duke game had no consequence to your rooting loyalties, then that eight-lateral return touchdown was awesome — even if there were multiple compounding blown calls on the play.

But as the value of college football increases, so too does the risk that large portions of its product could suffer consumer bias based on inconsistent quality in officiating. In any business, scrutiny increases when more money is at stake.

“The scrutiny on the game is so great now. It hasn’t been but a few decades ago that people would complain about calls, but you wouldn’t know if they were right or not because you just wouldn’t have the ability to see things in detail the way you do now,” Big 12 coordinator of officials Walt Anderson said.

“I think that’s driven the push for the idea of perfect officiating. Humans are going to make mistakes, but to what degree can we minimize those?”

So until automation altogether replaces the human element of officiating one day, a second set of eyes working to affirm or reverse live, on-field penalties is the best mechanism available.

The Pac-12 is charting this new frontier.

It’s September 24. Colorado leads Oregon 23-17 in Eugene, Ore., with 16 seconds left in the second quarter. It’s first-and-10. CU is on the Ducks’ 15-yard line when quarterback Steven Montez throws a deep fade to receiver Bryce Bobo in the left corner of the end zone. Bobo posts and jumps, catching the ball as Oregon cornerback Arrion Springs closes in. The momentum of the play carries both players backwards, but Bobo’s left foot pokes the grass as he leaves the end zone.

This matchup is the league’s first in a season-long experiment with centralized officials reviewing Pac-12 football games.

Bobo’s left foot is the first opportunity for a seemingly more authoritative eye in the sky to, if employed, affect the outcome. And with even the prospect of this new opportunity, a new age of technology in football officially begins. We think.

The side judge rules Bobo out of bounds. The previous play is now under further review in the booth at Autzen Stadium, during which the Pac-12 Network broadcast rolls slow motion replays from a variety of angles.

“I don’t know ... that’s a touchdown in my eyes,” analyst Yogi Roth tells the television audience, circling Bobo’s foot in yellow telestrator ink. “That’s a great shot from our crew. Remember, the replay booth gets every angle we do.”

530 miles south in San Francisco, Pac-12 director of video operations Mike Ortiz is clicking and dragging video feeds from Eugene, live-editing evidence of a to-be-determined argument for his audience as fast as he can. To his right are Bill Richardson, the league’s supervisor of replay officials, and Rich Rose, the replay communicator. Each man faces a monitor on the counter, and above the trio is a pair of 55 inch televisions.

The operation looks like a computer lab designed by Buffalo Wild Wings. In a room the size of a small college lecture hall, walls of televisions overlook monitoring stations where game reviewers log every play of any game involving a Pac-12 team. There’s a leather couch and chairs in the middle, and a large standing desk in the back where supervisors oversee the cataloging of each game.

On this particular play, the first point of contention is how close Bobo’s left foot came down to the sideline; that white cleat nestling near-parallel to the white border of the end zone. The series of actions under scrutiny comprise less than a second and a half of real time.

“‘Replay F. Foxtrot. Replay F. Replay D, replay Delta.’ There’s your shot. Foxtrot. Foxtrot and Delta are the same,” Ortiz says, sending a pair of opposing angles illustrating the same information — Bobo’s left foot — to the large TVs.

The second concern? “Where’s the ball in this? We haven’t seen that,” Richardson says.

“G. Replay Geronimo,” Ortiz says, bringing a new, wider angle to the largest screen.

Creating the Pac-12 Network’s content inventory in 2012 meant outfitting every campus with fiber-optic cable for live event coverage. Ortiz is pulling HD feeds into Pac-12 HQ from Eugene in almost real-time, as part of the same connection being used to broadcast the game. These officials in San Francisco are seeing replay footage at nearly the exact same moment as their counterparts in Eugene.

“OK ... From there it looks like he holds onto the ball,” Rose says.

“There might be some green there,” Ortiz says, pointing to a frozen image of Bobo’s cleat against the end zone.

A quick consensus in the room: Bobo established possession, but there’s no image that shows a substantial amount of space between his left foot and the out-of-bounds line to overturn the on-field ruling. That alone would allow the call to stand. There’s also doubt Bobo had possession.

“Looks like it’s going to stand,” says Rose. “Smells like ‘stands’ to me.”

Pac-12 referee Mark Duddy announces the play stands as called, creating a four-point swing: Colorado will kick a field goal on third-and-10 and take a nine-point lead into the half on the road against a team it hasn’t beaten since 1998.

Because of the lack of a central authority in college football, officiating is provincial. We tend to classify our bad officials by conference, and therefore region.

Larry Scott saw this firsthand. When Pac-12 coordinator of officiating Tony Corrente resigned in 2014 amid a series of highly publicized blown calls, the league needed to rehab the perception of its officiating among consumers, coaches, and players.

Scott created a full-time V.P. position to oversee, evaluate, and train officials, and hired David Coleman, a retired Army Lt. Colonel and West Point grad turned NFL replay official and director of the league’s referee development programs.

There are seven Pac-12 crews of eight officials, plus two replay officials. Coleman has overseen the hiring of the eighth official for each crew (a new policy adopted in 2015) and only had three departures — two retirements and a firing.

“I had no impression of Pac-12 officiating. None,” he says. “I’d heard stories, but I learned once I got here what some people’s perception was, that some people thought Pac-12 was the worst and there were issues. But I came in with a clean slate and took what I had and began to work with it.”

When the discussion of centralized official review came to college football after the 2015 season, the Pac-12’s fiber connection made it uniquely positioned to serve as guinea pig (the ACC and SEC are testing models this season and Anderson confirmed he’ll make a proposal for a similar test model for the Big 12 in 2017).

Two schools were chosen: California, for its proximity to league offices; and Oregon, because every major network would visit Eugene, and the league wanted to test connection and video relay in as many circumstances as possible.

“We’d put ourselves in a position to have that capability,” said Scott. “It’s still experimental because we want to test the technology and make sure it’s flawless. But our perspective was hey, if the technology already exists to help make sure the calls are right, we want to pursue that.”

So while the command center is still an archival operation, in the other corner of the room, real game officials are trying to determine how, if ever, to intercede or advise during games in real time.

“What concerns me most right now is, somehow, changing the dynamic of the [officiating] team,” says Coleman. “Officials … we don’t score points, but we like to say that we’re out getting dust on our cleats too. We have to be the third team out there,”

Yet, through Week 11, as many as 15,500 plays from the 2016 season had been logged at the command center, and none have featured seven laterals, nor has any single play become a talking point in a disputed outcome.

In seven games, the league has yet to overturn a call from San Francisco.

“At the very most, it’s been asking the officials on site if they’ve seen something we have, and they’ve already begun that process every time we’ve asked,” said Coleman.

“One of the things I was thinking about back in September was the ‘Big Brother is watching’-type syndrome in the field,” continued Coleman. “Now I think they appreciate the fact they know we’re there. It’s a value added. It’s a tap on the shoulder for our officials. A collaboration, not an order.”

Back to the Buffaloes-Ducks game in September. Colorado trails Oregon 38-33 with nine minutes left in the fourth. On third-and-10 from the Oregon 31, Montez floats another end zone fade to Bobo, again down the left sideline, and again into tight man coverage.

Bobo brushes off heavy contact to make a spectacular grab, but it’s ruled incomplete: possession on the one-handed catch by Bobo doesn’t appear to be completed when his right foot lands in bounds.

As the crowd reacts to the TD and the broadcast feed cuts away, Ortiz loads Replay Echo — it’s a vantage point above the back of the end zone looking down on the reception.

“Freeze it right ... there,” he says, as he pauses the feed. Bobo’s right hand possesses the ball as his right food lands in bounds. The image is frozen on screen, with Bobo akimbo like a figurine on a trophy. The room reacts in awe.

“OK, he’s in,” Rose says.

Possession and the in-bounds landing are established as bang-bang.

But, now to see if he’s maintained possession before he’s out-of-bounds.

Ortiz loads another angle, shot field-level from the opposite sideline. Bobo’s chest and arms are open to the camera side — it’s the clearest possible look at the ball in his hand.

“That’s control. One handed, but that’s control,” Richardson says.

Autzen comes in on the speakerphone: “It’s a touchdown.”

Colorado leads 41-38. The score holds when Oregon’s Dakota Prukop throws an interception in the Buffs’ end zone. CU wins, and head coach Mike MacIntyre champions the review in the postgame press conference:

“The way he caught it and his foot was in, I thought they’d give it to him because you could see had possession. He didn’t bobble it after, you know? That’s why we have replay, that’s why we do, because it’s hard for those officials to make those calls. I think a couple of those go all the way back to the Pac-12 office so that they could make a decision, a good decision without putting it on only one person. I think that really helped today and I’m really thankful for that.”

Except that none of San Francisco’s input was necessary for the game’s outcome to be achieved, which Coleman considers a smashing success.

“That’s why the technology is wonderful. You have it only when you need it.”