Post by rainman on Feb 3, 2008 6:01:29 GMT -5
COLUMN: Officials can handle pressure
By Bob Hertzel
For the Times West Virginian
MORGANTOWN— Super Bowl Sunday.
Patriots.
Parties.
Punts.
Pressure.
In the end, it is all about the pressure. Not on the players. They have nothing to lose but a football game.
Not even on Bud Lite’s Real Men of Genius like Mr. Pro Football Coach Cord Carrier or Mr. Raise The Net Before They Kick The Field Goal Guy.
True, if either slipped up, it would be a one of those wonderful SportsCenter moment to see Bill Belichick rolling around on the sideline, all caught up in his cord, or to see the game-winning field goal ball, worth hundreds of thousands of dollars, sailing into the seats as Mr. Raise The Net Before They Kick The Field Goal Guy gets caught up in the net-raising contraption and can’t get it up in time.
Even they don’t have real pressure, not like there is on the men in the striped shirts with the whistles in their mouths, the flags in their pockets and with 80,000 fans in the stadium and the unblinking eye of replay just waiting for them to mess up.
The quarterback, you see, can throw an interception. The ball carrier can fumble the football. The coach can call the wrong play. The linebacker can miss a tackle.
No do-overs there.
But let an official miss a call and red flags fly, earphones come out, the referee is sent into some viewing room, a canvas cloth over his head to hide the potential embarrassment if his crew is proved to have been wrong.
Talk about pressure.
“There really isn’t any pressure,” Fred Wyant was saying the other day. “If you don’t know how to handle the situation by this time, you probably shouldn’t have been chosen in the first place.”
He should know. The former West Virginia University quarterback from the great teams of the 1950s spent a good part of his adult life officiating in the National Football League. While he never got to do a Super Bowl, not exactly being the most political of officials, Wyant did get to do championship games, perhaps the most famous being San Diego’s 41-38 victory over Miami in the Orange Bowl on Jan. 2, 1982.
It was a game of missed field goals, a game where Kellen Winslow had to literally be carried from the field due to exhaustion after catching 13 passes for 166 yards, a game that dragged on and on and on.
If you think he was worn out, so, too, was Wyant.
“I was always worn out mentally after a game. I’d get behind the quarterback and have a check list, certain things to make sure I got straight before each play. Is the guard moving, did someone go in motion, did the quarterback move his head? Things like that every play. I did it so I would not be startled if something happened.”
It was the old Boy Scout in Wyant. Be prepared.
“Good people in any walk of life are those who anticipate all that could happen,” he said.
And he had done that all game, and it was paying dividends.
“We didn’t make a mistake in the game,” he said, “but each time they lined up for a game-winning field goal, I kept saying to myself, ‘Please make this thing.’ All we needed was for an official to blow a call and have the game end that way.”
Today, of course, things are different. Officials no longer really make calls. They are almost like the early Apollo 7 astronauts who were sent into space in capsules, unable to fly their own machine, relying on someone off somewhere in a booth with a control panel before him.
The same is true today. It is not the official on the field who has the real pressure. It is the replay official in the booth, who must has the final say in whether a foul has been committed, a touchdown scored or if a ball is placed in the right spot.
About the only thing he doesn’t make a ruling on is whether or not the coach is wearing NFL approved apparel that can be purchased either in your local sporting goods store, online or through the NFL catalog.
True, it’s tense out there, although Wyant admits that he managed to find a way to have some fun, recalling a long-ago game between the Los Angeles Rams and the Green Bay Packers.
Deacon Jones was at defensive end for the Rams and Forrest Gregg was the offensive tackle for Green Bay, both Hall of Famers.
After one play, Jones went screaming to Wyant, “Forrest Gregg is holding me. He’s holding me.”
Wyant turned to Gregg.
“Are you holding him?” he asked.
Jones looked at the official and yelled, “Hey, don’t ask him. He won’t tell you.”
They all finally laughed.
That was when football was fun. Today, as Wyant says, the league “may fine an official if he says something like that or suspend him.”
That’s kind of sad to hear, because we’re all waiting for the Super Bowl when the Subway commercial comes to life as an official stands in the center of the field, turns on his microphone and announces:
“I totally blew that call. In fact, it wasn’t even close. But don’t worry. I’ll penalize the other team for no good reason in the second half to even things up.”
By Bob Hertzel
For the Times West Virginian
MORGANTOWN— Super Bowl Sunday.
Patriots.
Parties.
Punts.
Pressure.
In the end, it is all about the pressure. Not on the players. They have nothing to lose but a football game.
Not even on Bud Lite’s Real Men of Genius like Mr. Pro Football Coach Cord Carrier or Mr. Raise The Net Before They Kick The Field Goal Guy.
True, if either slipped up, it would be a one of those wonderful SportsCenter moment to see Bill Belichick rolling around on the sideline, all caught up in his cord, or to see the game-winning field goal ball, worth hundreds of thousands of dollars, sailing into the seats as Mr. Raise The Net Before They Kick The Field Goal Guy gets caught up in the net-raising contraption and can’t get it up in time.
Even they don’t have real pressure, not like there is on the men in the striped shirts with the whistles in their mouths, the flags in their pockets and with 80,000 fans in the stadium and the unblinking eye of replay just waiting for them to mess up.
The quarterback, you see, can throw an interception. The ball carrier can fumble the football. The coach can call the wrong play. The linebacker can miss a tackle.
No do-overs there.
But let an official miss a call and red flags fly, earphones come out, the referee is sent into some viewing room, a canvas cloth over his head to hide the potential embarrassment if his crew is proved to have been wrong.
Talk about pressure.
“There really isn’t any pressure,” Fred Wyant was saying the other day. “If you don’t know how to handle the situation by this time, you probably shouldn’t have been chosen in the first place.”
He should know. The former West Virginia University quarterback from the great teams of the 1950s spent a good part of his adult life officiating in the National Football League. While he never got to do a Super Bowl, not exactly being the most political of officials, Wyant did get to do championship games, perhaps the most famous being San Diego’s 41-38 victory over Miami in the Orange Bowl on Jan. 2, 1982.
It was a game of missed field goals, a game where Kellen Winslow had to literally be carried from the field due to exhaustion after catching 13 passes for 166 yards, a game that dragged on and on and on.
If you think he was worn out, so, too, was Wyant.
“I was always worn out mentally after a game. I’d get behind the quarterback and have a check list, certain things to make sure I got straight before each play. Is the guard moving, did someone go in motion, did the quarterback move his head? Things like that every play. I did it so I would not be startled if something happened.”
It was the old Boy Scout in Wyant. Be prepared.
“Good people in any walk of life are those who anticipate all that could happen,” he said.
And he had done that all game, and it was paying dividends.
“We didn’t make a mistake in the game,” he said, “but each time they lined up for a game-winning field goal, I kept saying to myself, ‘Please make this thing.’ All we needed was for an official to blow a call and have the game end that way.”
Today, of course, things are different. Officials no longer really make calls. They are almost like the early Apollo 7 astronauts who were sent into space in capsules, unable to fly their own machine, relying on someone off somewhere in a booth with a control panel before him.
The same is true today. It is not the official on the field who has the real pressure. It is the replay official in the booth, who must has the final say in whether a foul has been committed, a touchdown scored or if a ball is placed in the right spot.
About the only thing he doesn’t make a ruling on is whether or not the coach is wearing NFL approved apparel that can be purchased either in your local sporting goods store, online or through the NFL catalog.
True, it’s tense out there, although Wyant admits that he managed to find a way to have some fun, recalling a long-ago game between the Los Angeles Rams and the Green Bay Packers.
Deacon Jones was at defensive end for the Rams and Forrest Gregg was the offensive tackle for Green Bay, both Hall of Famers.
After one play, Jones went screaming to Wyant, “Forrest Gregg is holding me. He’s holding me.”
Wyant turned to Gregg.
“Are you holding him?” he asked.
Jones looked at the official and yelled, “Hey, don’t ask him. He won’t tell you.”
They all finally laughed.
That was when football was fun. Today, as Wyant says, the league “may fine an official if he says something like that or suspend him.”
That’s kind of sad to hear, because we’re all waiting for the Super Bowl when the Subway commercial comes to life as an official stands in the center of the field, turns on his microphone and announces:
“I totally blew that call. In fact, it wasn’t even close. But don’t worry. I’ll penalize the other team for no good reason in the second half to even things up.”
