Why is it that refs have such a hard time with which side of the coin is heads and which is tails?

At the game I was very confused by the overtime coin toss.  The Washinton player called heads, the result was a tails (or so the ref said) but it was Washington who got the coveted choice from the coin toss.  What gives?

Well it appears from now reviewing the television coverage that the ref had to spend 15 seconds figuring out that the side of the coin that was up was indeed the heads.  Of course us fans had already cheered for the tails and moved our focus elsewhere.

I just don’t get how a person can say: “OK, this is heads (shows head side of coin to players).  This is tails (shows other side of coin to players).  What do you call?” then flips the coin in the air after the call and three seconds later can’t figure out if the coin in his hand is showing heads or tails?

I mean, OK, I know that they’re often using special coins that aren’t like a quarter or the change we are used to but THEY JUST LOOKED AT IT and verified which side is heads and tails.  I think they need to add a class at ref school for this.

This entry was posted on Sunday, October 22nd, 2006 at 11:52 am and is filed under Sports, Sports - Cal Football. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.