Sunday March 2, 2014
Was watching the SEC indoor track and field championships on ESPN3 yesterday, and after the women’s 4×400 relay, felt I had to post something about the controversial call that gave the Florida women the championship over Texas A&M. Heading into the event, A&M was the leader in team points, with Florida second. A&M didn’t need to win the 4×4 to win the meet, but they needed to score enough to prevent Florida from overtaking them. As the race took shape, it appeared that A&M had the team title on lock. Entering into the final leg, A&M and Florida had separated themselves from LSU and Kentucky. So as far as team points were concerned, it didn’t matter which team won the 4×4; A&M was going to win the meet.
But on the last turn of the last lap of the last leg, the A&M athlete made a move to pass the Florida athlete. The A&M athlete did pass her by a slight margin, but not by enough to cut in front of her into lane one. However, the A&M athlete did cut in a little bit, to the outside edge of lane one. The Florida athlete made a surge to get back in front, but ran into the elbow of the A&M athlete. The collision caused both to stumble, but the Florida athlete was able to keep her momentum better, and Florida went on to win the 4×4, with A&M second, and LSU a distant third.
Watching on the live stream, viewers were informed by the commentators that a yellow flag had gone up, and the officials were going to make a decision on the 4×4 contact, and thereby make a decision on the winner of the meet. The color commentator pointed out that the only way A&M could lose the meet was if they were to be disqualified, as they would score no points in the 4×4 if that were the case.
Initially, the commentator informed us that the officials had ruled “no harm no foul,” meaning that even though the A&M athlete had cut in too far into lane one before being far enough in front to do so, no change had occurred in the results. If there’d been no contact, the order of finish would’ve been the same.
But then the commentator informed us that Florida was protesting that ruling, for the obvious reason that they wanted the team title.
Ultimately, after the broadcast went off the air, the initial “no harm no foul” ruling was overturned. A&M was disqualified. Florida won the SEC team championship.
I’ve always been a spirit of the law kind of guy, not a letter of the law guy, so the final ruling upsets me. To win a championship on an official’s ruling isn’t the way to win a championship. But of course if I’m the Florida coach I have to do whatever I need to do to help my team win. What if the Florida coach doesn’t protest the initial “no harm no foul” ruling? He’s not doing his job.
If you look at the replay, it does seem clear that the A&M athlete did in fact commit the violation. But it still makes me sick to my stomach to think of the heartache that A&M anchor leg is going through right now, after running her heart out only to feel that she let the entire team down with her rules infraction.
But I guess it’s fair to say that sort of things happens all the time in track and field. Part of the gamesmanship in big meets involves getting points anyway anyhow without regard for kids’ feelings and without regard for the fact that these are, in fact, kids. I for one would be perfectly fine with taking out the entire team-point aspect of track and field and allowing each event to have its own champion, and that’s it. There aren’t any team points in the Olympics, in the World Championships. So you don’t have this sort of common insanity that you see in collegiate and high school championships, where a kid’s dream is shattered in the name of a team victory.
