Tick E. Tack

This is directly inspired by last night’s BYU/Hawaii (not to be confused with BYU-Hawaii) match, but it’s actually pretty relatable to all sports.

I thought the officiating in last night’s match was pretty lousy. It didn’t necessarily favour one side over the other, thankfully, but it was all just stuff you never really want to see in a postseason match. And in my mind, that included the final call of the match.

Looking at replays, yeah. Ramos played the ball while it was over the plane of the net, after it had touched a BYU player (Russ Lavaja), while Ramos was back-row. That’s a fault. But you’re kidding yourself if you think anyone watching in the Smith Field House knew that immediately. Even the officials didn’t. It took a short conference before they awarded the point, and match, to BYU.

Why do we have rules in sport? They’re to ensure the game is played fairly and that skill and execution between the two (or more, as in racing sports) sides are what decide the outcome. Penalties are put in place to disincentivise any unsporting actions, though in many cases those ‘unsporting’ actions are pretty endemic to how the game itself is played (a player fouling out in basketball isn’t necessarily a dirty player, for instance).

Sport sanctioning bodies frequently examine their rulebooks to ensure that they still make sense and provide for fair and clear governance of the sport. Every sanctioning body does this. It’s how (and why) the kickoff gets moved in football, instant replay is (agonizingly slowly) adopted in baseball, accumulated technical fouls lead to automatic suspensions in basketball, and so on and so forth.

In the strictest sense, doubles and lifts are in the volleyball rule book simply because they’re in the rule book, but going back to the very invention of the sport, the ball was meant to be played by a single, ‘pushing’ contact. To play the ball in any other way is not sporting in the game of volleyball as we know it. But remember in 2009, the NCAA issued a ball-handling directive to their volleyball officials. They were instructed to ease up on calling double-hits that would have been called for no reason other than that it’s a rule in the book (by itself, that’s not a great reason to blow your whistle). If an ‘honest athletic effort’ to start a team’s offence might have resulted in what, strictly speaking, letter of the law, was a double, officials were instructed to let the rally continue. The point was to bring out longer, more athletic and spectator-friendly rallies and stop calls that people who hadn’t memorised the rulebook wouldn’t necessarily understand.

It’s got me wondering if the last rally last night should have been approached the same way. Did Hawaii necessarily gain any unsporting (even in the loosest possible sense of that term) advantage by Ramos playing the ball over the net like that? I’m genuinely not sure, I’m merely raising the question. The rest of that rally, which officially never actually happened, was so incredible. It’s just awful that it had to be wiped away like that.

Would you want a playoff baseball game to end on a non-obvious balk or interference call? The game-winning three-pointer in basketball waved off because of a little body contact 20 feet away? A goal in hockey wiped off the slate because somebody’s skate lace was in the goal crease?

I think the answer to all of those is a pretty resounding no. Most fans prefer officials to be hands-off rather than hands-on (though consistency is all that really matters). You hear it all the time if you’re at a game — “Oh, let ’em play, ref!” Now there does come a point where “letting ’em play” means calling the action fairly. If a player takes 10 steps without dribbling the basketball, then he (and not the official) decided his team’s possession by committing a turnover. The hard (nay, impossible) part of it is knowing where the line between the two is.

So I think regardless of any rooting loyalties, the way last night’s outstanding match ended was probably always going to leave a bad taste in my mouth. Spirit of the law, and not letter of the law, is what I prefer to see, especially on match point in the postseason. If a player commits a brutally obvious double or lift, then yeah, call it. That’s not taking the game out of the players’ hands. But if you’re calling something just because it’s a rule in the book, I’d really much rather you swallow the whistle.