Should NFL or College Referees Have Post-Game Press Conferences

Washington State head coach Mike Leach brought up an interesting idea to OregonLive reporter John Canzano regarding referees in college football, and potentially the NFL.

The long-time coach suggested that referees should be available to the media after a game. This could allow the official to discuss their calls first-hand and give immediate explanations without the league releasing a written statement.

"“What’s difficult about it is nobody talks about it. That’s not workable. It’s like anytime you’re not honest with somebody about something it becomes difficult… .. as soon as the game’s concluded, the referee should be the first guy in the press conference. And he should take any questions that the media wants to ask about officiating. Games aren’t going to be called perfectly. Some are going to be well called games but not perfectly…. then it takes it off the coaches.“We’re not allowed to talk about it unless we want to get fined and I’ve done it both ways. They’re going to ask because they want to know and on a certain level they have a right to have some dialogue about it, but not with the coach… right now we don’t have any system like that. If the coach has to talk about the game, I don’t know why the referee wouldn’t.”"

The NFL Mocks staff discussed the idea and had very different thoughts on it.

Rodney: I like it, if errors were made they could be brought to the light immediately as well as discuss controversial calls.

Jon: Yes, please

Sayre: That would be fun

Now not everyone was a fan of this idea. Curiously, at least in my mind, our resident high school coach Matthew Holowiak was completely against it. Here’s the discussion we had:

Matthew: No way. This would open the doors to pretty much removing referees in general. They are constantly on blast as it is and now we want to put them in front of a group of people to yell at them? There is a constitutional right against cruel and unusual punishment.

Rodney: How would it remove referees?

Matthew: When you put them on blast and question them on every call, and you see mistakes after the fact why wouldn’t the league take them out and go strictly by cameras?

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Rodney:

Because that would call for reviewing tape on every play, looking for every single penalty that could be. Human mistake is part of football.

Matthew: That’s the point I’m making is that there will always be things missed, and putting refs on blast in a room like that will lead to more errors on the field, and the way it’s going it won’t be long before they remove it entirely, just my opinion.

George: As a coach, would you want to have a post-game meeting with them to discuss a certain play?

Matthew: There are certain ways to address them during games that most coaches ignore. The more you yell at a ref the more they will ignore you. When coaches come up pregame and introduce themselves, and during the game in a calm tone ask a referee to explain a previous play why it was ruled the way it was, there is a high chance of getting a good explanation. That comes directly from the head NFL officials in New York whom I met back in February.

It certainly creates an interesting topic. What do you think? Vote in our Twitter poll below and continue the discussion.