RON SEIBEL: No replay yet, but GHSA moving in right direction

The GHSA just couldn’t catch a break last December.

An early snowstorm shut down six of the eight football championship games, causing a week’s delay and forcing the games to be moved to campus sites. It was a decision not taken well by many, although things worked out superbly for Lee County in its Class 6A title contest, an epic overtime thriller with Coffee played in Leesburg that had an electric atmosphere that would not have been matched at Mercedes-Benz Stadium.

With no formal plan in place at the time of the snowstorm for rescheduling games, the GHSA was left to scramble, using precedent from other sports to come up with a way to move forward.

No movement toward a formal plan was taken at Monday’s GHSA Executive Committee meeting in Macon, the first time that body has met since the football championships were played.

There was, however, movement from the other major controversy that came out of those football championships.

For the second time in four years, Calhoun was the beneficiary of a controversial call that had a direct outcome on the result of a championship game. In this case, an official ruled an apparent Peach County fourth-down touchdown pass in the closing minutes of the Class 3A championship game incomplete despite replays that showed a clean catch.

This was a situation in which instant replay would have overturned an obvious error. Either the touchdown would have been awarded, or, if ruled the receiver went out of bounds on his own before catching the ball, a penalty called and the down replayed. (Unlike NFL and college rules, an illegal catch does not result in a loss of down in high school football.)

But the same problem that keeps most states from instituting a shot clock in high school basketball stands in the way of replay: cost.

Not only is there the inherent cost in procuring replay equipment, there’s also the need for personnel to run the cameras and to review the replays themselves. In an arena where most are either working for free or are being grossly underpaid already, good luck getting schools to front that investment.

Could replay be used in the state finals only? In theory, yes, so long as the games are played in facilities like Mercedes-Benz Stadium, where replay systems are already set up and the games are televised by a full production crew like GPB.

Alabama took a step recently toward adopting instant replay, giving schools the option to purchase the equipment and to use it in games. It’s likely that only large and/or wealthy schools will implement it, but they will have the option.

A better first step, however, was the vote that the Executive Committee took Monday to change the makeup of playoff officiating crews.

The GHSA had been using six on-field officials for playoff games. That left the middle of the secondary uncovered, forcing officials who line up along the sidelines to make calls, sometimes from a good distance away.

Monday’s vote added a seventh on-field official, who will line up in the back judge position. Not only would that officiating position have given an extra set of eyes to the Peach County catch/no catch call, but that back judge official also would have been in a good spot in the other game-changing controversial call involving Calhoun in a championship game in which an apparent interception by Washington County’s AJ Gray in the 2014 Class 3A title contest was overturned by an official from the other side of the field.

The GHSA took a step toward getting things right by adding the back judge. While replay in the title game should be the goal, the move to add the seventh official should not be discounted or seen as a cheap out.

It is progress. And when dealing with the state’s second-greatest deliberative body in the GHSA Executive Committee (the folks under the Gold Dome in Atlanta have the top spot wrapped up), sometimes you take what you can get.

Contact sports editor Ron Seibel at [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter @RonSeibel.