Bad Calls, Missed Opportunities, and Lawsuits

I haven't paid a ton of attention to high school football in years. Aurora Christian had a strong football program when I was in high school, and they made three state title games in the six years after I graduated, winning two of them. Logan has been on the roster of Aurora Central Catholic's football team for four years, and they made the playoffs three of his years. None of those trips resulted in deep runs, but it's not like ACC was a slouch by any stretch of the imagination. I also called some DVC football games during my tenure at WONC, including an overtime thriller between Naperville North and Neuqua Valley, as well as one of the classic Naperville North-Naperville Central battles that ended up coming down to a missed field goal as time expired that allowed Central to escape with a win.

I can appreciate good football, even at the high school level. But I've also been critical of the powers that be at many levels of the sport... okay, mainly at the NFL, and to a degree at the Cartel that allowed the BCS to carry out injustice for so long. But bad decisions can stretch down even to the prep level. And we saw that in action over the weekend.


On Saturday, Fenwick High School, a Catholic high school in Oak Park, played Plainfield North High School in a Class 7A semifinal playoff game. The winner would go to Champaign to play for a Class 7A state title.

Photo by Eric P. Davis (Pioneer Press)

Fenwick led 10-7 and had the ball on their own 15 yard line with four seconds to go. It was fourth down, and when you're up three in that situation you have a few options you can go with. Fenwick coach Gene Nudo had come across this situation multiple times in his coaching career. Instead of kicking away, when all sorts of shenanigans can occur and had occurred to them in the past, he opted to have his quarterback, Jacob Keller, drop back, watch the clock hit zero and throw a bomb downfield where it can't be intercepted and take the victory. But a flag came out: the referee called Keller for intentional grounding, which carries a ten yard and loss of down penalty. Since this was fourth down, this results in a turnover on downs. But since the clock read zero, the game was over. Or, at least, it should have been. Instead, officials gave Plainfield North an untimed down.

Photo by Eric P. Davis (Pioneer Press)

If this movie sounds familiar to you, it should. The game between Central Michigan and Oklahoma State had the exact same final sequence: Oklahoma State heaved a pass out of bounds on a fourth down as time expired, but got called for intentional grounding. Those officials mistakenly gave Central Michigan an untimed down, which they used to successfully run a Hail Mary and win the game. In the Fenwick-Plainfield North game, because of the field position, Plainfield North was able to kick a field goal, which they hit to tie the game and force overtime.

Photo by Eric P. Davis (Pioneer Press)

In the overtime session, Fenwick scored a touchdown and went up 17-10 on the first possession. Plainfield North responded with a touchdown, but went for two and succeeded, resulting in an 18-17 win and a trip to Champaign. Now it was the Plainfield fans' turn to rejoice and celebrate. What Fenwick's Coach Nudo didn't realize right away was that the game should never have gotten that far.

According to the National Federation of High Schools' Rule 3-3-4, a game-ending loss of down penalty does not provide an untimed down to the other team. So, just like in Oklahoma, the refs got this wrong. And it impacted the outcome; Fenwick was the rightful winner, but the record books will say Plainfield North was the victor.

If you are a regular reader of Confessions of a Sportscaster, you probably know my view on these things. Officials are human; they make mistakes. Sometimes they make monumental mistakes, but an overwhelming majority of the time, these mistakes don't impact the outcome. But in rare instances, they do impact the outcome. This game was one of them, and it's blatantly obvious that this is one of them.

Now, the IHSA has admitted the officials' mistake. But per IHSA bylaws, all referee decisions are final. Any appeals will not be heard. Normally, this would be the end of the story. The team that got robbed will complain about miscarriages of justice, and their fans will point to this game for years as such, but it becomes a fact of life, and they eventually move on. That is, unless you're Fenwick High School. In that case, you file a lawsuit.

Photo by Eric P. Davis (Pioneer Press)

Yesterday news broke and a statement was released that the school was suing the IHSA, demanding "declaratory, injunctive, and other relief." Since it's an injunction, they've got a court date set for tomorrow morning, which is impressive speed for the courts, especially in Crook Cook County. But I don't know what Fenwick hopes to gain by taking this to the courts.

Prior courts have been loathe to get involved in a lot of sports disputes. Of course, the NFL spent millions of dollars to defend its witch hunt of Tom Brady in court, and a court ultimately found in their favor, refusing to tread on a sports organization's governing rules, even though, again, it was a witch hunt and Roger Goodell needs to be fired [out of a cannon into the sun]. But I'm getting off topic.

The IHSA's bylaws are the bylaws. It makes perfect legal and common sense to say that all decisions of on-field officials are final and cannot be protested to the IHSA after the fact. Once you review one, you open up Pandora's box, and the IHSA board will spend its entire time hearing protests about a holding call with seven minutes to go in the first quarter or trying to persecute PA announcers who show a little too much emotion on a home team's three pointer or something. It's a bad precedent.

Even though it is clear as day that the on field officials got this one wrong, there's no misapplication of IHSA bylaws here. And even if there was, you can't go back after the fact and start overturning the results of games based on one bad call, even if it was on the last play of the game and awarded the victory to the wrong team. You do that for one game, and suddenly teams will spend more time in the classrooms on legal arguments than they would on the field practicing because every game would end up needing to go to court over some misapplied rule or some other inadvertent whistle. This lawsuit is going to get thrown out tomorrow morning, and it won't take Judge Kennedy long to do so.

Photo from The Herald News (Photographer uncredited)

There is one thing that can be done, and it's something that many Internet commenters have called for: Plainfield North should vacate its win on Saturday. It wouldn't reverse the decision on the field, and it would mean East St. Louis would automatically get the Class 7A championship, but it's the only realistic action that would make up for the injustice that played out. While it would suck for the Plainfield North players that wouldn't get to play in a state title game, they don't deserve to go in the first place since they were incorrectly given the win. But it would be a show of humility and sportsmanship that would look better than how Fenwick has looked by suing over the result of a football game and wasting the court's time and money on a case that will immediately get thrown out.

At the end of the day though, everyone loses in this situation. I feel for Fenwick's players, who were robbed of a chance to play in a game they'll never forget. I kind of feel for the officials, who will never work another playoff game, if even another game, after this gaffe. I even feel for Plainfield North's players, who will hear about how they don't deserve to be going to Champaign and how a title game appearance and even a title, should they win, would be tainted. I don't feel particularly bad for Plainfield North coach Tim Kane, who wants to dismiss this as "outside forces" and not acknowledge that they got lucky. I also don't feel for the IHSA, who is hiding behind bylaws to protect themselves from justice, even though those same bylaws are in place to hold back the gates of hell from wreaking havoc on sports forever. This whole situation is just a shame. And to think it's all because a group of men didn't watch the Central Michigan-Oklahoma State game, or if they did, missed the memo about rule applications.