officiating Page 3 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights

The Texans Are Steamed Over Some Questionable Officiating
The Texans’ 27-20 loss to the Raiders might have looked very different had a call or two gone Houston’s way, and a visibly pissed Bill O’Brien had to hold his tongue after the game to avoid getting fined....

Cam Newton Is Right To Be Pissed
After he took a hit to his knee that wasn’t flagged on Sunday, Cam Newton went off on the NFL. “At times I don’t even feel safe,” Newton, the reigning league MVP, said at the start of an extended rant about calls he frequently doesn’t get. “And enough is enough.”...

Thanks To Draymond Green, NBA Refs Will Be Cracking Down On Hits To The Dick And Balls
Draymond Green was the loudest, brashest, most dick kicking-est player on the NBA Finals-losing Golden State Warriors, and he has already secured a legacy of sorts for himself: starting next season, NBA referees will be making a point to spot and penalize strikes to the dick and balls, or what the A...

Roger Goodell Vs. The Refs
I want to make a revelation that I truly believe—and have believed for a long time:...

NFL Breaks Up Pete Morelli's Entire Officiating Crew After Bizarrely Terrible Season
There really is no way to describe Pete Morelli’s 2015 season other than as a nightmare. Blown calls—lots of them, and in very visible situations—led to the Morelli crew unsurprisingly being left out of the postseason, and now the league has come down with its strongest censure short of termination:...

Refs Missed Russell Westbrook's Travel At The End Of Game 1
Did Russell Westbrook travel in the waning seconds of last night’s Thunder Game 1 win? Yeah, totally. Does that ever get called, let alone late in a playoff game? Ehhh....

The Panthers Are Out Of The Playoffs Because Of A Bad Call
For pure entertainment value, Islanders-Panthers was the best series of the first round, with every game being close and half of them going to overtime. It ended in spectacular fashion, with John Tavares (who had five goals and four assists in six games) tying the game in the last minute of regulati...

Umpire Awards Point To Caroline Wozniacki's Opponent For No Reason
Dominika Cibulkova knocked Caroline Wozniacki out of the St. Petersburg WTA tournament yesterday in a match that featured one of the most baffling decisions made by a chair umpire we’ve seen in a long time....

Conference Video Reveals Boise State-Colorado State Ending Botched By Bad Technology
Mountain West officials waved off James Webb’s would-be buzzer-beater because their replay technology counted time at double speed, a video released today by the conference reveals....

Officials' Timing Blunder Hurts Clemson; FG Attempt Falls Short
Greg Huegel’s 44-yard field goal attempt fell short after Clemson found themselves without a chance to run an additional play when officials allowed several seconds to run off the clock after a first down late in the first half of tonight’s national championship....

College Basketball Team Loses After Being Assessed Technical Foul For Celebrating Game-Winner
A desperation three-pointer by Sioux Falls’s Taylor Varsho gave the Cougars a 59-58 win over Division II rival Winona State—a team that had previously beaten them by 39 points—until officials assessed Sioux Falls a technical foul for celebrating the buzzer-beater that, replay showed, left less than ...

Troll King Joey Crawford Is Retiring
Nobody could make himself part of the game like Joey Crawford. Inevitably, he’ll ref a few games per year where tension builds between teams and rather than let it progress to a boiling point, Crawford will instead make himself the protagonist and overreact, usually with an extra technical or ejecti...

The Replay Booth Probably Did Not Assist Ed Hochuli On Late Facemask Call
For a moment during the third quarter of tonight’s Monday Night Football contest, it seemed that we had yet another refereeing controversy on our hands. As Broncos DE Malik Jackson sacked Bengals quarterback AJ McCarron, he grabbed McCarron’s facemask. But despite McCarron pleading for the call as h...
![Duke Wins Pinstripe Bowl After Would-Be Indiana FG Ruled No Good [UPDATE]](https://images.deadspin.com/tr:w-900/xajbxiugr6lggryskrfp.gif)
Duke Wins Pinstripe Bowl After Would-Be Indiana FG Ruled No Good [UPDATE]
Indiana kicker Griffin Oakes’s overtime field goal went wide right, ruled officials, giving Duke its first bowl win since 1961 as the Blue Devils claimed the Pinstripe Bowl trophy at Yankee Stadium....

Pete Morelli's Season Has Been A Referee's Worst Nightmare
Everyone in the NFL likes Pete Morelli. The 19-year veteran is consistently one of the league’s highest-graded, most-respected officials. Last year he won the Art McNally award, the NFL’s highest honor for an official, for his career body of work. Yet Morelli and his crew are having the single worst...

Here's Your Ready-Made NFL Officiating Conspiracy Theory
In the wake of a string of very visible officiating blunders—and a perceived increase in the number of zebra screw-ups—the NFL this week announced a potentially big change to its postseason procedures, one that will expand the types of disputed calls on which officials will be allowed to consult the...

The NFL Is Making Sure Officials Don't Fuck Up In The Playoffs
The NFL thrives because of gambling, and people gamble on the NFL because they believe it’s on the level. It’s a profitable little circle that gets disrupted when officials screw up, something that feels like it’s been happening with increasing frequency this year. The NFL does not want to run the r...

Bills Coaches Confront Officials, Call Them "A Disgrace To The NFL"
Some of the Bills didn’t have much to add after Sunday’s 23-20 loss the Eagles—like RB LeSean McCoy, who spent the week talking not-so-nice about his former coach, even reportedly hanging up on Chip Kelly when he called to chat. Following the final whistle, McCoy bolted from the field and dismissed ...

Report: NFL Forms Six-Member Committee To Fix The Catch Rule
This offseason the NFL will overhaul its Rube Goldberg Machine of a catch rule, hopefully into something mere mortals can understand. Maybe next season you’ll actually get to cheer when your favorite player makes an extraordinary catch, instead of waiting to react until the referees review the play ...

NFL's VP Of Officiating Defends Very Bad Year Of Officiating
One of the defining characteristics of this NFL season has been late-game officiating controversies. There was the tumultuous ending to the Patriots-Bills game, the weird anti-Cam Newton grandstanding by Ed Hochuli, the phantom offensive pass interference call that allowed the Broncos to give the Pa...