The Victors

…a week long argument where both sides are entrenched and talking past each other while potentially meaningful discourse about the larger picture is ignored.

1.) Is parsing whether or not the player who stepped out of bounds touched the ball with one second - or no seconds - on the clock really what replay is for? This isn’t basketball where the game ends at the buzzer. The game ends when a play ends and the officials look up at the clock. None of them are looking at the scoreboard while the play is going on. If the standard is “getting it right” even when none of the officials see it, what are we even doing? This is the standard now for VAR in soccer, and it absolutely sucks. Goals being disallowed for fouls that occurred at the other end of the field while obvious fouls are ignored on set pieces (sorry, crumbs). It takes away from the game.

2.) Having said that, the replay officials made the decision in real time. Get on with it. Abuse of umpires and officials at lower levels is a major issue in youth and high school sports. Can we, as humans (because this happens all over the world) just accept that sometimes things don’t go our way? My God, instead of bleating on and on about how Western got cheated, maybe take a second to appreciate an unbelievable throw and catch. It isn’t like Michigan got awarded a second chance to sneak it in from the half-yard line.

3.) People are the same. That’s one hill I will die on. More than a handful of you have notes on Ohio-born officials that have been assigned to the OSU-Michigan game over the years. I know perfectly rational, intelligent people who were convinced the FBI was involved in the Harbaugh-Stalions stuff because a “credible” poster on bucknuts was inside the investigation. Stuff like this has caused me to be somewhat introspective about the information I consume and immediately choose to believe (or disbelieve) and contemplate how susceptible I am to confirmation bias. I’ve realized, however, that…no, it’s the children who are wrong.