Everyone brings up good and relevant points. At the end of the day, there is a Side Judge or Head Linesman on the sideline whose job is to ensure that a foot comes down in-bounds. There is a Back Judge that focuses more on the possession aspect of the catch, but he is also tracking the initial foot-down mechanic as well I'm guessing but from a different angle. This missed call is egregious enough to demote the official that was on the sideline. Ship him/her down to work the JUCO circuit with an occasional NAIA or D3 game. Like I said, it felt like an easy call from the TV angles. How the hell does the Big Sky not have access to that replay? Practically every BSC game is an ESPN+ game at the least. No way they can't get up to par with camera angles to support the officials. Bush league
The camera work was terrible and this is not unique to Sac State. ESPN+ has minimum requirements 6 positions with 1080i broadcast cameras at 60fps but ultimately the school hires the production. You’d need 150-300fps capable cameras to have good replays and probably 10 positions. Sidelines inside the 20 have poor angles and the track puts the cameras extra far away. The refs got this one wrong for sure, though the cameras they had to work with may have been inconclusive. I don’t know if suspending them solves much. Refs at even at the NFL level are not paid all that well. For Big Sky I think they make $500-$900 per game, so these are guys who are either retired or have a day job and probably took Friday off work to travel. Given that the conference all but acknowledged that the outcome of the game is incorrect, perhaps the committee will think of it as something less than a full win. The comments among some of the Sac faithful defending the outcome as just, well we can see who hasn’t reached the Maslow’s self actualization stage.
I get it that mistakes are made during the fast action in a game both in calls that are made that are questionable and in fouls that are actually committed but simply missed. The thing about this call though is that the side judge had an unobstructed view of the play and, when you examine the photo and watch the video, you can see that nothing was blocking his view. The only thing I can think of is that he was focused on the catch and just didn't notice the player's right foot being down way out of bounds. The player even landed squarely on his back on top of the sideline as well. This was an absolutely glaring mistake and Sac got "gifted" a win.
If the Big Sky says its a clear mistake, doesn't that mean that there was a reply view that showed that? Or are they going by some Idaho dude's Iphone picture?