The cure for CFL’s uneven officiating? Tom Higgins
Higgins just might be able to fix officiating that’s become embarrassingly rancid
With the unerring accuracy of an Olympic marksman aiming for a gold medal, the Canadian Football League last week zeroed in on its target, took a deep breath, squeezed the trigger — and shot itself in the foot.
Even for the league’s renowned Department of Screwups, it was an epic moment. Winnipeg A&W worker Karen Kuldys became a household name from coast to coast, while the CFL’s name was Mudd.
Then, with a chance to pull off a brilliant public-relations coup, the league instead took careful aim a second time — and blew away its other foot. The simple, obvious solution was to take up a collection from the league’s owners, give Kuldys the million dollars and walk away smelling like roses.
But the CFL never does things the simple, obvious way — not when it can garner a week’s worth of terrible publicity by wrongfooting it at every step. Needless to say, it all started with the CFL’s longtime bugaboo: inept officiating, the chief complaint of CFL fans from coast to coast.
Mercifully, there is a solution: his name is Tom Higgins. Former CFL director of officiating, outmanoeuvred by tricky Jim Popp during his tenure as head coach of the Alouettes, last seen acting as defensive coordinator for the Calgary Dinos, a position for which he is absurdly overqualified.
In case you were swatting mosquitos at the cottage and missed the whole fiasco, a brief review is in order. It began last Thursday, with the Argos’ Martese Jackson bolting for the end zone on a 109yard kickoff return.
If there’s one thing the CFL hates, it’s exciting plays. The officials had already permitted one too many when Winnipeg’s Ryan Lankford ran the opening kickoff back 105 yards and the referees had seen enough of that nonsense: Toronto’s Llevi Noel was flagged for a non-block on Winnipeg’s Mike Miller eight yards behind the play, Jackson’s touchdown was called back, and boom! Fiasco central.
If not for Kuldys, it would have ended there. CFL blows another call, negates another spectacular play. Ho-hum, and where did Genie Bouchard lose this week?
But had the second kickoff return TD been allowed to stand, Kuldys would have won the Safeway/Sobeys $1,000,000 Touchdown to Win Contest. Suddenly, the whole country was caught up in a mini-drama surrounding a topic that usually preoccupies CFL aficionados only: “Why is CFL officiating so rancid and what can be done about it?”
This was when newly minted commissioner Randy Ambrosie should have stepped in. Ambrosie had been on the job only three days, but this should have been an easy call: Give the woman her million bucks.
For the low, low, low price of $111,111.11 per franchise, the CFL could have stepped into the breach in place of Safeway/Sobeys and paid Kuldys.
Instead, Ambrosie came out of the starting blocks like Ben Johnson and fell flat on his face. Kuldys was handed a bunch of cheesy prizes like 500,000 Air Canada Reward Miles — which come in handy if you want to fly from Winnipeg to Hamilton with connections through Regina, Kansas City, Atlanta and Newark.
This one was a no-brainer. So the league reacted as it usually does, with no brains. Worse, having gone full FUBAR in the new commissioner’s first week in office, the league also brought the spotlight to bear on its Achilles heel: officiating so bad it makes Major League Soccer look good.
Sadly, the flag thrown on Noel was typical of the CFL. The call was behind the play, pointless — and wrong, since Winnipeg’s Miller was falling before he was touched. You can always find something to penalize on a football field, so common sense has to come into play — but when you put on the zebra stripes in the CFL, you check your common sense at the door.
Having so thoroughly bolloxed his first crisis, Ambrosie can yet save the day. To put it simply, the league throws too many flags, negates too many great plays, leaves far too much open to replay review (pass interference should not be reviewable) and too often fails to penalize the really dangerous hits, especially those that target the noggins of the league’s quarterbacks.
There is a solution. In the 20plus years I’ve been covering the CFL (since the return of the Alouettes), there has been one brief period when CFL officiating was on the upswing, when it didn’t seem the refs thought they should be the stars of the game.
That was when Higgins was director of officiating from 2008 through 2013. Randy Ambrosie has to talk to the man and make him an offer he can’t refuse. Sort out this mess and provide the CFL with something that approaches professional officiating. Higgins has the experience, he has the track record, he commands the necessary respect.
Because if it hasn’t already dawned on you, Randy, the CFL has a problem with its officiating. If you don’t believe me, ask Karen Kuldys.