Agreed, but view makes it appear that the call was good and not very close, and the ref had the perfect, unobstructed view.
I understand why it wasn't reviewed now.
This exposes a huge issue with the review system, and is in my opinion why it should have been reviewed.
Now, the on field ref might very well have had a very good view of what happened and made an accurate call accordingly. However, as far as I understand it he's out of the loop of the review process. What ever triggers a review shouldn't happen based on how clearly he saw it, but rather what another group of people decide. Allow me to quote:
"
The Centralized Replay Room review process shall be a collaborative review process between the Supervisor of Replay Officials, the Command Center Replay Officials and the in-stadium Replay Officials. "
Those are all replay officials being cited, so the guy on the field might be 100% correct but I don't believe that is a factor in triggering a review. There's also no way that the review officials had the same exact view in real time, at least not in such a manner that they could arrived to any consensus on it. It is as I understand it if the play meets certain thresholds, which basically amount to close enough and important enough. There's been controversy multiple times before about the Pac-12 choosing not to review something, and they've changed protocols but still for what ever reason have a willingness to forgo the review even if it is clearly the type of play reviews are intended for.
I'll elaborate on why I think that's a huge problem. The purpose of the review isn't just to get the call right, it's not whether or not the review overturned a call that justifies reviewing it. You don't say well that was a good review because it overturned the call, or that was a bad review because it didn't, but rather the purpose of the reviews is to do so in a reliable and consistent manner. So that for instance
every single play of a certain type should always be reviewed.
In this case, the review process kind of backfires on a team in Ole Miss' situation because clearly they thought it should have been reviewed, and if it was the SEC it would have been reviewed, but because of the erratic nature of Pac-12 reviews it was not. The fact that it probably should have been reviewed (once again the purpose of reviews is not merely to change wrong calls, but to double check, to guarantee correctness), disrupted Ole Miss. With 9 seconds to go the players were confused and the Ole Miss coach is yelling about a review instead of being able to merely focus on running the next play. If reviews don't exist, Ole Miss knows what they have to do. If the play is reviewed (as it should have been), then Ole Miss knows what to do. Ultimately it was the uncertainty that did them in.
The protocols need to be clear and followed to the letter. Since it's been a moving target for the Pac-12 I'm not really sure what they are, but even if the outcome seems alright superficially, it's not good for college football. Yes, the new normal might be that a team with time running out gets a free timeout when a close call is reviewed. That might be how things work now. That's ok though, as long as it
always works that way. It's not ok now, that review is ignored in the biggest moments of a game, with the outcome on the line. If it's not put to use then, then what's the point of having it at all? The Pac-12 and the college football world needs consistency on the reviews, and they're certainly not getting that from the Pac-12.