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Any game Andre Proulx and his crew are a part of becomes a joke at some point. This is not specific to the Lions. The league always talks about improving the officiating, yet they continue to trot this group out every week, with the same results. Surely there are referees out there not currently in the CFL that could do better. The fans and stakeholders deserve better.

justabitoutside.podbean.com

JaboVancouver wrote: ↑

Fri Jul 07, 2017 3:16 pm

Any game Andre Proulx and his crew are a part of becomes a joke at some point. This is not specific to the Lions. The league always talks about improving the officiating, yet they continue to trot this group out every week, with the same results. Surely there are referees out there not currently in the CFL that could do better. The fans and stakeholders deserve better.

justabitoutside.podbean.com

I don't agree and I think Proulx does a better job than most other refs at explaining what the call and infraction are about, albeit not in purrfect English. However if you have example that prove me wrong then please enlighten.

If one did the statistics, I expect the CFL officials are no better nor worse than the officials for any other sport.

Baseball umpires miss some calls on balls and strikes. We see first base umpires miss calls. The umpire who called Jackie Robinson safe while stealing home against the Yankees and Yogi Berra may have got it wrong.

Basketball refs miss calls on fouls for and against.

Many iffy calls in hockey. Penalties. Off sides.

In football, O Line holding has many borderline calls. Pass interference, same thing. Roughing the QB.

It is like a nagging itch. We have to live with it, and we have to call it as we see it.

Overall I am not too unhappy with the officiating in the CFL. I recall my Dad many, many years ago railing against Paul Dojack, who seemed to favour the Riders. LOL

DanoT wrote: ↑

Fri Jul 07, 2017 4:24 pm

I don't agree and I think Proulx does a better job than most other refs at explaining what the call and infraction are about, albeit not in purrfect English. However if you have example that prove me wrong then please enlighten.

Canadian sports fans waste far too much energy complaining about officiating in all sports. I've never had a reason to criticize Andre Proulx. He has worked seven Grey Cups, including last year's thriller, because he's one of the best at his job.

God Bless both Jackie Robinson, a hero for the ages, and Yogi Berra.

I always took it as Jackie got home first. Berra always claimed Jackie was out. It looks to me like Yogi has the glove down in front of the plate as Jackie's foot slides into it. The umpire is hardly in a good position to judge. C'est la vie.

By the way, did any of you ever referee or umpire a game? My God, what a thankless task. I've done football, basketball and baseball. I think it was in baseball that one feels most keenly the disapprobation of the athletes.

Disapprobation is not strong enough. Fury.

Some further complications ...

Isn't the batter entitled to swing at that pitch? Yogi prevents that by moving forward.

What if it was a called third strike, and the end of the inning? Before Jackie touches home plate? After?

Of course it is covered in the rules. Not going to look it up.

WestCoastJoe wrote: ↑

Fri Jul 07, 2017 4:56 pm

By the way, did any of you ever referee or umpire a game? My God, what a thankless task.

We won tickets to last year's Grey Cup and for some reason only known to the sponsors of the contest, they wound up providing us seats earmarked for a CFL official. We sat with a number of the refs and their families and it was quite insightful.

We learned that half of the officials that begin the year don't make it to the end. They are essentially under continuous job review and if they are deemed to be not adequate, it is back to the books so to speak.

A 50% "failure rate" (best descriptor I can think of) seems to indicate a fairly tough standard is in play.

The thanklessness of the job is unfortunate and the obnoxiousness the refs are subject to is ridiculous. To quote Shakespeare ( I know the Bard would favour the CFL), "if you pr*ck us, do we not bleed?" It was actually quite sad to hear the foul-mouthed BS being hurled by some idiots towards the officials at the Grey Cup and how much it affected and angered a fellow ref and friend of Proulx. But all he could do was sit and take it.

Lastly, I was totally surprised refs have to pay full face value for their Grey Cup tickets. No freebies there...

I have a new found appreciation of how hard it is to be a ref in the CFL.

CardiacKid wrote: ↑

Fri Jul 07, 2017 9:19 pm

WestCoastJoe wrote: ↑

Fri Jul 07, 2017 4:56 pm

By the way, did any of you ever referee or umpire a game? My God, what a thankless task.

We won tickets to last year's Grey Cup and for some reason only known to the sponsors of the contest, they wound up providing us seats earmarked for a CFL official. We sat with a number of the refs and their families and it was quite insightful.

We learned that half of the officials that begin the year don't make it to the end. They are essentially under continuous job review and if they are deemed to be not adequate, it is back to the books so to speak.

A 50% "failure rate" (best descriptor I can think of) seems to indicate a fairly tough standard is in play.

The thanklessness of the job is unfortunate and the obnoxiousness the refs are subject to is ridiculous. To quote Shakespeare ( I know the Bard would favour the CFL), "if you pr*ck us, do we not bleed?" It was actually quite sad to hear the foul-mouthed BS being hurled by some idiots towards the officials at the Grey Cup and how much it affected and angered a fellow ref and friend of Proulx. But all he could do was sit and take it.

Lastly, I was totally surprised refs have to pay full face value for their Grey Cup tickets. No freebies there...

I have a new found appreciation of how hard it is to be a ref in the CFL.

Insightful post. Officiating in any sport is a thankless job. I think coach's challenges and automatic reviews have put officials under even more scrutiny. People are analyzing freeze-frame HD images from multiple angles to determine whether a ball came loose a fraction of an inch before a player' knee touched the ground. Now those freeze-frame images are circulated for days on social media.

Officiating is part of the game. There are 24 players running around on every play, and they all make mistakes. If you look to blame an official's mistake for a loss, you're looking in the wrong place. Try the mirror.

Actually in some ways, I have more compassion for the on field officials than the "Command Centre". I can certainly understand how something at game speed that might come down to a matter of centimeters or split seconds could be misread or called. What I don't often understand is how the "Command Centre" with it's close ups, multiple angles and slow mo still seem to come up with perplexing decisions.

It was a pretty familiar print to the Toronto win and the way the season has gone so far.
Don't think the Lions can afford to look past anyone but have to admit it is getting to the point where the measuring stick is Calgary and how the Lions will fare against Edmonton and Winnipeg as well. Everything else, with the excpetion of Ottawa, almost feels like "holding serve."

So far they are 0-1 in that department with the season opener loss but the jury is out on how good this team is or how much it has improved. Beat Hamilton and it's a fantastic road trip but two big games up next against the Bombers and Eskimos, then the ultimate mid-August test at home against the Stamps.

I think Ed Willes pointed out Jennings is 2-10 as a starter combined against the Stamps and Eskimos. That is hardly a reflection of him but rather the team assembled on both sides of the ball that started late in Jeff Tedford's one and only season. Last year started out very well with home opener win against the Stamps then what should have been another victory at McMahon before being embarrassed in the Western Final.
Now Edmonton looks to be back in the mix along with the Bombers who self-destructed agains the Stamps last night.

I think a great idea for TSN would be to run a piece on the Command Centre, take us inside to see what happens.

Hambone wrote: ↑

Sat Jul 08, 2017 8:29 am

I think a great idea for TSN would be to run a piece on the Command Centre, take us inside to see what happens.

Yes. It might be particularly enlightening for the TSN commentators and panelists who don't know the rules of replay. I believe at least two American networks use former NFL officials as expert commentators on their broadcasts. They are much more informative than the TSN panelists who don't know what they're talking about but always proclaim that they're right and the officials or the command centre are wrong.

SammyGreene wrote: ↑

Sat Jul 08, 2017 7:46 am

It was a pretty familiar print to the Toronto win and the way the season has gone so far.
Don't think the Lions can afford to look past anyone but have to admit it is getting to the point where the measuring stick is Calgary and how the Lions will fare against Edmonton and Winnipeg as well. Everything else, with the excpetion of Ottawa, almost feels like "holding serve."

So far they are 0-1 in that department with the season opener loss but the jury is out on how good this team is or how much it has improved. Beat Hamilton and it's a fantastic road trip but two big games up next against the Bombers and Eskimos, then the ultimate mid-August test at home against the Stamps.

I think Ed Willes pointed out Jennings is 2-10 as a starter combined against the Stamps and Eskimos. That is hardly a reflection of him but rather the team assembled on both sides of the ball that started late in Jeff Tedford's one and only season. Last year started out very well with home opener win against the Stamps then what should have been another victory at McMahon before being embarrassed in the Western Final.
Now Edmonton looks to be back in the mix along with the Bombers who self-destructed agains the Stamps last night.

I believe our talent has enabled us to win against most teams. But when we play other CFL teams where there is very little talent difference, such as Calgary, Edmonton, then scheme, game planning, play calling and coaching become more important...and that is where we are most deficient.

The best example of this was when we played the Stamps last season. We beat the Stamps in the first contest in 2016, early in the season, when schemes are more simple and pre-game scouting is more limited. We lost a close one to the Stamps in the next contest. But the next two times we played Calgary, they completely dominated us on offence and defense.

What would cause that? The talent on both teams had remained basically the same. The difference was that the more Calgary knew our Leos team, the better prepared they were to play us. But knowing Calgary's offence and defense meant nothing. That's because we do the same thing all the time whereas Calgary does a much better job of pre-game analysis and strategizes much better than we do. The major difference between our Leos and Calgary is not talent but coaching,

Last season, we were mostly dominant against Eastern opponents but had our struggles against Western opponents, with a .500 record, which included three wins against Saskatchewan.

While our Leos defense played well overall against Montreal, the reality is that we gave up more passing yards against Montreal than other defenses this season.

I'm still struggling to understand why we moved Purifoy to safety. It doesn't make sense to me. Purifoy is an outstanding nickel back who played that position last season. Purifoy had an interception, a fumble recovery, and four tackles playing that spot in our last exhibition game this season . Last season Purifoy had 43 defensive tackles, 5 quarterback sacks, caused four forced fumbles, and had a fumble recovery that he ran back 47 yards for a defensive touchdown.

Why move him?

The answer was to get Chandler Fenner on the field. Fenner was cut at training camp in 2016. He came back to our Leos part way through the season, after both T. J. Lee and Clarke were injured but was unable to unseat Gaitor, who had now stepped in. Then when Yell got injured, we moved Gaitor to short side corner and Fenner finally got his chance, playing short side defensive halfback.

Fenner was having a good 2017 training camp and Wallt wanted to get Fenner into the lineup. So, at the end of training camp, with no practice time playing safety, he moved Purifoy to safety so that Fenner could play nickel.

In the meantime both Clarke, who beat out Fenner last season and MacDonald both looked good at safety. Why not let Fenner be the dime back? Or why not let Fenner play safety? Or why not let Fenner compete with Lee at defensive halfback.

Making two positional moves, with Fenner playing a new spot from last season and Purifoy also playing a new position, doesn't make a lot of less sense to me. Maybe it will work out as the season progresses and maybe not.

I really like Yell at short side corner and Gaitor at wide side half. I'm pleased that we are playing a National wide-side corner with Thompson beating out Parker and both are good ones. I wish Purifoy was playing nickel and Clarke, Macdonald, or Fenner were at safety. I would be happy to see Fenner at short side halfback as well. He was just as good as Lee at that position last year and Clarke was actually better than Lee at halfback last season before his injury.

While our defensive backfield is better than last season, I still believe a couple of positional changes would make it even better.

This LU article about TL14's quick action with an iPad during the game shows he should have a bright future in coaching:
http://3downnation.com/2017/07/13/upon- ... ing-lions/

How do teams get their replays on their Ipads ?