CFL.ca Staff
TORONTO — CFL.ca presents a conversation with CFL Director of Officiating, Tom Higgins:
CFL.ca: Tom, we’re approaching the midway mark of the 2010 season. Some teams are up, some are down, and your team, the officials, are under fire. How would you assess them?
Tom Higgins: I’m proud of our officials. They work hard, study hard, and are very professional. They do a tough job very, very well. I’ve coached football at every level. I’ve won Grey Cups. I’ve coached defence and offence and now, the third team on the field, the officials. And the level of passion for our game I see in our officials, every moment of every day, is second to none. No one cares more. No one.
CFL.ca: But coaches, players and fans have all criticized officials this year.
Tom Higgins: Welcome to football. Or sport. Only one team on the field or the court or the ice is expected to be perfect, and that’s the officials. How many times do you see a football team commit three turnovers, in any league, and then someone blames the loss on the officials? As I said, our officials do a tough job very, very well. I didn’t say they do that job perfectly. No team I’ve coached has ever had a perfect game, including the officials. Of course, there are missed calls on occasion. But I’ll tell you this: in a typical football game, there are four to six turnovers, several infractions committed, and more than a few blown assignments on both sides of the ball – and probably one or two controversial calls. I can make an argument that on many nights, the third team on the field has had the best game.
CFL.ca: Okay, a fan might say you have to say that, you have to support the officials. After all, you’re their boss. But there seems to be a consensus in the media that officials need to be more consistent, especially when it comes to pass interference calls. Consistency is the buzzword and PI has been the focus.
Tom Higgins: Pass interference is the toughest call in football. And, on occasion, it’s also the most misunderstood. I’ll give you an example. The ball is in the air, and there is contact between the defensive back and the receiver, but no flag. The hometown fans can’t believe the official missed that contact. After all, the slow motion replay shows the contact was obvious. But the fact is the official had to make a judgment call. Did the DB initiate the contact to prevent a completion? That’s a foul. Or did the players collide as they both went for the ball? That’s not a foul. People see contact on one play, and a flag, and contact on another, and no flag, and say that’s inconsistent. Well, depending on the play, both calls could have been correct. I’ll give you another example: on an underthrown pass, if a player tries to come back to play the ball and is prevented from doing so by a defensive player who has established position, there is no foul. On a play like that, the receiver is likely to complain, and his team’s fans are going to roll their eyes, but the call is correct.
CFL.ca: So all of the critics are wrong, and the officials are always right?
Tom Higgins: Not at all. Mistakes are made. One example that comes to mind was a play when Toronto visited Edmonton a few weeks ago. An Argo receiver was knocked to the ground – we missed it – and the result was an interception by Jason Goss. But what I can tell you is that in the vast majority of cases, the right call is made. Look, we evaluate every official on every play. Every official gets graded on absolutely every play. Even guys who are sixty yards away from the ball are evaluated on whether they were in the position they were supposed to be in on that play. It’s a level of scrutiny I’ve never seen applied to any player in any film room, even on Grey Cup winning teams with excellent coaching staffs. So when I say the right call is made in the vast majority of cases, it’s not a matter of opinion. It’s the result of rigorous analysis of game tapes, every game, every week, all season long.
CFL.ca: You’d get an argument from many fans.
Tom Higgins: I love our fans. I love their passion. Look, I wouldn’t have a job in this great game – none of us would – without the fans’ passion for their teams. And I understand the passion of our coaches and players. I’ve coached in this league, I’ve played in this league. You fight and claw for every win. So I understand that fans, and coaches and players are going to bring that passion to their perception of the officials and their performance. But when we do our utmost to take the emotion out of it, and analyze the tapes, our guys grade out very well. Not perfectly, but very well.
CFL.ca: I don’t see many coaches saying the officials are bad. They’re just saying how they each call a given infraction is inconsistent.
Tom Higgins: I sometimes joke that when I look back to when I was competing as a head coach in the CFL, my definition of consistency was calls consistently going my way. That’s the nature of a competitor, and what makes our coaches great coaches is that competitive fire. I can tell you we work incredibly hard at consistency. We don’t just review tape after a game. We do training sessions with officiating crews between games, where we’ll isolate a type of play, and illustrate the consistent standard we want to achieve. But that doesn’t mean there aren’t judgment calls still to be made. Here’s another example of a tough judgment call: There is contact on a receiver, five yards beyond the line of scrimmage, before the ball is thrown. That’s illegal contact on a receiver, right? Not necessarily. If a defender has established his position, and the receiver runs into him, there is no foul. So Arland Bruce III makes a cut and collides with a linebacker. You, as an official, have to decide if that linebacker had established his position, or he shifted that position with the intention of impeding Arland from running his route. It’s a bit like in basketball, when the referee has to call a charge or a block, and they call that the toughest call in basketball. Except in our game, this call might be made far from the ball, making it even tougher.
CFL.ca: Come on, Tom. On the majority of passing plays, if the DB makes contact with the receiver with the ball in the air, it’s pass interference. It’s not that complicated.
Tom Higgins: You might think that. But on a lot of calls, you’d be wrong. Here’s another pass interference example, and it’s a beauty: A receiver and a defensive back are running down the sideline, and the ball is in the air, and the defender trips the receiver. What’s the call? Well, if the players are in an equal position – they’re running side by side — and the trip is inadvertent, there is no foul. If the DB is trailing the receiver, and the trip is inadvertent, it’s what we call “accidental pass interference,’ and it’s a ten yard penalty, and an automatic first down. Of course, if the DB trips the receiver on purpose, regardless of whether they are side by side or not, it is a foul. So the official has to instantly determine if the trip was on purpose, and if the two players were in equal or unequal position, and he has to do that on the run, while watching the ball to determine a completion, as two of the finest athletes in the country are sprinting downfield. It’s not as easy as it seems, believe me, but that’s why our guys love
it. They love the game and they love the challenge.
CFL.ca: Here’s another complaint we hear from fans, on our forums, Facebook and Twitter: If a coach keeps losing, or a player keeps messing up, he’s gone. But there are no repercussions for bad officials. How come? Do you ever discipline, or cut, an official?
Tom Higgins: There are lot of myths around how we handle officials. Maybe that’s our fault, for doing things quietly. We tend to try to keep the focus on the players, where we believe it belongs. But the truth is we have let veteran officials go, and we have sent young officials back to the university level to gain more experience. We also have our own cut down dates. As we approach Labour Day, we cut down from six crews to five, based on who has the best grades in their evaluations. As we approach the playoffs, we go from five crews to four, again based on their evaluations. Only the best crews get to do the East and West Finals. And the best of the best get to officiate the Grey Cup. Remember, our officials compete to make the Grey Cup game, just like our teams do. They support one another, of course, but they also compete very hard.
CFL.ca: Still, when I watch games on TV, it feels like I’m seeing more talk about the officials than in previous years.
Tom Higgins: I really believe it’s part of the game, every year. And that’s true across all sports. Coaches are under pressure to win. Players are under pressure to perform. Fans want their teams to succeed. And, frankly, broadcasters are under pressure to have strong opinions and make snap decisions. Sometimes, in the heat of the moment, there is a rush to judgment, and human nature being what it is, we tend to judge officials harshly. But when we judge them, calmly and coolly looking at tape from every possible angle, our officials come out on top the vast majority of the time. They really do. Everyone knows the reality: no one cheers for the officials except for a few of us in the office, and maybe their spouses and kids. I just wish sometimes people in the media would resist the urge to rush to judgment, or they would praise a great call as quickly as they highlight a controversial one. But officials don’t take on this responsibility because they love praise. They do it because they love the game. That’s the one thing I wish fans appreciated a bit more: our guys love the game as much as they do, they really care.
CFL.ca: If criticizing the officials is part of the game, why is the league office so sensitive about it? This Commissioner in particular has fined coaches and players for criticizing CFL officials.
Tom Higgins: It’s not a matter of protecting our officials. Believe me, they hear tougher stuff from folks in the stands than they see in the newspapers. But when you diminish our officials, you diminish our game. And everyone in the game – coaches, players and officials – share a responsibility to treat our game with the respect it deserves. The truth is our officials and our league are top notch. This really is a great game and a great league. I came here as a very young man, after an NCAA career and a successful stint in the NFL, and I’ve been blessed to have a long career in the CFL, which I’ve seen now from almost every possible angle. I can tell you the CFL, the people who coach it and play it, and the men who officiate it, deserve to be treated with respect, because together we provide our fans with a truly great product. How many things stand the test of time? Well, this year’s Grey Cup in Edmonton will be the 98th. That tells you something. This is special.
