Replay review is serious business
Baylor’s Denzel Mims dropped a pass over the middle, the ball caromed straight to West Virginia’s Keith Washington
Jr. for an interception and as they landed on
the turf together, Mims suddenly had the ball back in his grasp.
In a Las Colinas bunker, three college football writers made a beeline for the back row of the 1,000-square foot Big 12 Replay Operations Center.
We were too late. In less than 10 seconds, a myriad eyeballs commissioned with getting officiating calls correctly had determined that the interception stood. That Mims had wrestled away the ball after he and Washington had hit the ground.
“We’re all confident with that, Gary,” Big 12 replay coordinator David Warden said to in-stadium replay official Gary Brown. “You can confirm.”
Officiating is the punching bag of all athletics, from World Cup soccer to Little League Baseball. And college football, with perhaps the most rabid fanbases in American sport, is no different. The Big 12’s replay center is not at the conference headquarters and its location is not disclosed, in part for security reasons.
But the zeal with which fans cheer on their squads is matched by the Big 12 officiating structure. The conference is serious about calling football games correctly, and the Replay Operations Center is a monument to that commitment.
The Big 12 last week invited a few media outlets to spend Thursday night in the ROC, observing the Baylor-West Virginia game. Brad Townsend of The Dallas Morning News and Stephen Hawkins of The Associated Press joined me for a night that proved quite educational, though not at all controversial.
Hard for either side to get worked up by officiating in a game that became 41-0 West Virginia by halftime.
“People do not understand how hard we work at officiating,” said Greg Burks, the Big 12’s coordinator of officiating. “It’s incredible how far this has come.”
This far. The Big 12 invested more than $1 million in the ROC, which opened last year and is the baby of Bret Ayres, the Big 12’s 35-year-old director of technology and video services. Ayres, a former small-college defensive lineman, oversees the replay command center, which contains two miles of cables and six stations for games, plus a back row for Warden and Burks to monitor the process and help make decisions.
Each station has three monitors — one for the onsight replay official, one for the ROC replay official and one displaying the television feed. Each station is manned by a replay official and a technician with an officiating background. At the stadium, a four-man crew works replays — the replay official, a communicator and two technicians.
Plus Warden and Burks, who is in his first year as the Big 12’s supervisor of officials. That’s at least three officiating experts following every game and reviewing every play, to see if play needs to be stopped for a possible overturn.
“In a perfect world, I don’t have to get involved,” Burks said.
Warden and Burks have the ultimate final word but say most decisions are collaborative, and that certainly was the case in the Baylor-West Virginia game, when a full stoppage occurred only once. WVU tailback Leddie Brown scored an apparent touchdown in the second half, but then the ROC sprang
into action.
“Let’s stop it, Gary,” Warden told Brown, who was in the press box. “I think he’s going to be short.”
So Brown in West Virginia, replay official Richard Jordan in the southwest corner of the command center and Warden in the northeast corner of the command center quickly watched a variety of plays. They saw Brown’s left elbow apparently hit the ground short of the goal.
“I’d put it like, go back a frame or two, I’d put it within a foot of the goal line,” Warden tells Brown. “Just short of the goal line, it’s going to be second down. I wanted to see the left elbow compressed.”
Warden, who was an NFL official from 19982002, is a retired Henryetta dentist. He drives to Irving from Oklahoma each weekend, then heads home after the slate of games and is sent a variety of videos in which he helps Burks grade the league’s officials.
Warden joined the Big 12 staff in 2006, the second year of college football replay, and has been the replay coordinator for about 10 years.
“We understood, this is going to be really big in college football,” Warden said of replay.
Big 12 coaches don’t have much beef with the replay system. They don’t always like the calls on the field, but the replay review system is to their liking.
“I’m familiar with the command center and all that,” OU’s Lincoln Riley said. “I think it’s been fine. I haven’t had any complaints.”
OSU’s Mike Gundy lauded Big 12 officiating but admitted he doesn’t know the process used to determine replays.
Burks would like to educate the coaches and get them down to the ROC for
a game, even saying that he and his crew could learn from the coaches, who see football with a different kind of eye.
Give the Big 12 credit. Under previous officiating coordinator Walt Anderson, the Big 12 fostered a culture of transparency. Anderson now works full-time for the NFL, and Burks has continued such an attitude.
“When I started out, my dream was to referee a high school state championship game,” Burks said.
“For me to end up here, I’m the luckiest guy in the world.”
Spend a night in the ROC, and you realize the high quality of on-field officiating.
Late in the second quarter, West Virginia’s Tevin Bush broke free for a long run. He finally was hauled down but appeared to fall into the end zone for an 80-yard touchdown run.
But the on-field official ruled Bush down at the 1-yard line. Warden and crew quickly sprang into action.
And without a stoppage in play, they determined that indeed Bush’s knee was down at the 1-yard line, with the ball short of the goal line.
“He’s good,” Warden tells the stadium replay booth. “Let him go.” But Warden keeps looking, just to be sure. “That left knee’s down. You don’t need to stop it.”
It took about 20 seconds. In Milan Puskar Stadium, fans likely were screaming for a replay review, not knowing that 1,216 miles away in the Big 12’s ROC, the case already had been solved.
Berry Tramel: Berry can be reached at (405) 760-8080 or at btramel@oklahoman.com. He can be heard Monday through Friday from 4:40-5:20 p.m. on The Sports Animal radio network, including FM98.1. You can also view his personality page at newsok.com/berrytramel.