Richard Brand: The Ref’s Call

There was a situation in Texas one year when a high school coach was faced with the need to coach his team to lose in order to qualify for the state tournament. I do not remember all the details but the team needed to lose in order to win. The big debate centered on whether or not it was appropriate in sporting events to play to lose. That presented the old question about when do the short term goals get trumped by the long term goals. “Is it okay to lie for a greater truth?” “Can you steal in order to feed your family?” “Can you commit murder of a tyrant for the good of the country?” Now certainly losing a game is not the same as murder, but in many ways the arguments are the same.

This week in the NCAA March Madness basketball tournament presented another challenge to the public. As I read about the ref’s call and saw the replays, the situation certainly provide a lot of material for discussions. The game was between Syracuse, a number one seeded team, and the UNC-Ashville who was a number 16 seeded team. No number 1 has ever lost to a number 16 in the history of the tournament.

Syracuse was ahead by 3 points with about 30 seconds left in the game. UNC-Ashville was pressing Syracuse who was trying to get the ball inbounds. The ball was thrown to a Syracuse player near the side line. The UNC-Ashville player dove for the ball and collided with the Syracuse player. There are many who would make the case that the contact was a foul by the UNC-Ashville player. The ball clearly hit the hands of the Syracuse player. The ball went out of bounds. The official call was that the ball belong to Syracuse on the side line.

Years ago there was a rule that allowed the officials to call a “force out.” The official could rule that the defensive played had pushed the other player out of bounds. The official could give the ball to the team that was pushed out of bounds. That rule has been removed, but it would have been a perfect rule in this situation.

The ref did not call the contact a foul. “Incidental contact” is a concept that has been emerging as a dominant response to a lot of contact in basketball over the years. But there have been many who have argued that the official used that “ignoring of the foul” as the reason for giving the ball to Syracuse for an inbound. The contact was not bad enough to justify calling a foul, but the “incidental contact” was the cause of the Syracuse player dropping the ball and so the ball should have been awarded to Syracuse.

There are others who say if the contact was not bad enough for a foul at that time of the game, then it should not have been a factor in the decision as to whom the ball was given and it should have been UNC-Ashville’s ball. Thus giving UNC-Ashville another chance to try to tie the score or win.

We try to play life “by the rules” but that so often just is not possible. Two rules: foul or out of bounds and neither of them fits actually the situation and a judgment has to be made that makes no one happy. The officials would much rather see the game being decided by players on the floor making plays rather than making calls that give chances to score and change the game. The official in this case made a quick call that gave the ball back to Syracuse, did not call a foul on the UNC-Ashville player, and allowed UNC-Ashville thirty seconds more to try to make a play.

So much of life makes us all make calls that do not fit the rules. So many of the choices are somewhere in the middle between two or three rules. The desire may be there to be a straight shooter and always abide by the rules. We can even be dogmatic about “law and order” and “doing the right thing” but we only set ourselves up for disappointment and pain. The fact that we live between the rules means we need to be a lot more humble, a lot more gracious to others as they make their “calls” and a lot more open to the forgiven we need for the “calls” we make.