OPINION: Referees called into question after the Gaucho’s football team’s loss to Venture

RobinHiggins / Pixabay

What the F just happened?

In lout of the absence of football this weekend I decided it was time to discuss the terrible call that the referees made during last Saturday’s game at Ventura College. For those of you that weren’t there to witness it here’s a recap.

It was during the fourth quarter the Ventura College Pirates were up 44-34. The Gauchos had the ball with 2:45 remaining in the game. For the longest time no one was moving, no one was talking, and no refs were whistling. It wasn’t until we all looked down the field to see the clock counting down, 2:45… 2:44… 2:43… 2:42. The crowd began yelling, pointing and cussing the refs out in an attempt to get them to stop the clock. Some people were even waving their hands up at the press box trying to get the announcers attention to see what was going on. This happened for almost a full minute until the game started up again. The issue is Saddleback was down by 10 points and only had 2:45 to get a touchdown and a field goal to at least tie up the game.

As unlikely as it seems to get all of that done in a matter of 2:45 when the Gauchos were starting on their own 35-yard line, spirits were high and the team seemed to have faith in this chance. That was until they lost an entire minute and just decided to get the ball as far as possible and keep the Pirates from scoring yet again.

After talking to some of the players even, they said they weren’t sure what was going on nor what the reason for running the clock was. According to Clay Travis from Deadspin.com in his attempt to explain the new clock rules for college football, what happened during last weeks game shouldn’t have happened. One of the primary changes that Travis explained was that when the ball goes out of bounds and the next play is about to start, the clock now starts on the blow of the whistle rather than the snap of the ball. The issue here is that the referees didn’t whistle and the ball wasn’t snapped so the clock should not have started.

No matter what happened, whether the refs had a reasoning for allowing the clock to run for that long or not the ignorance in this game didn’t end there. Because Saddleback fans were so angry at what these obviously paid off referees allowed to go on, when the clock ran one second longer than it should have, the referee called out to the press box and asked them to add one second back on the clock. This spited many of the Gaucho fans and caused a major ruckus to go on in the stands and on the field.

The final and most disrespectful part of this football game was after Ventura took a knee and the referees whistled to acknowledge the end of the game. The referees immediately ran off the field, most likely for the reason that they obviously knew Saddleback fans were not happy with them and would not make it off the field in a safe fashion, so they were oblivious to the fact that Ventura decided to run to the opposite end of the field nay-naying and waving goodbye at Saddleback’s team when they were so nicely and generously walking to their side to shake hands and show good sportsmanship.

I personally think that no matter if we won the game or not Saddleback fans would have thought it was a good and interesting game but the second the refs began to show their favoritism and the other team showed their terrible sportsmanship that’s when our fans turned against the game and got angry. This is no way to conduct a college football game on the part of the referees and the Ventura College football program.

Comments

comments