WAC says it’s sorry for 22-minute replay review

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Saying the 22-minute delay for not-so-instant replay review in the second quarter of Saturday’s University of Hawaii-Louisiana Tech football game was “an embarrassment,” the Western Athletic Conference office issued a public apology Tuesday.

“I apologize to the Louisiana Tech and Hawaii student-athletes and coaches, fans and members of the media who had to sit through this excessive delay,” commissioner Karl Benson said in a statement on the conference’s website. “It was an embarrassment to the WAC and steps have been taken to prevent something like this from happening again,” Benson said.

UH won, 44-26 in Ruston, La., and the game took 3 hours, 56 minutes to play, the longest regular season contest for the Warriors in four years.

Benson, who attended the game and went into the replay booth to get to the bottom of the problem, said, “The instant replay official failed terribly in managing the review process as we have policies in place that state if a particular call can’t be overturned in two minutes, the play in question must then stand.”

The review occurred early in the second quarter following a punt by Hawaii. The WAC said, during the preceding series of downs, a timeout was called by Hawaii as a third down play was being run. The officials granted the timeout and the play did not count, but the replay official thought the timeout was granted after the completion of the play. Following an incomplete pass on the next play and then the subsequent punt, the replay official buzzed the field to inform the referee that five downs had occurred and that the plays needed to be reviewed.

At his press conference this week, Tech coach Sonny Dykes said, “they did surgery with a chainsaw in trying to get the call right.”

Dykes said, “Hawaii’s team handled it a lot better than we did. Our players did not handle it very well and we didn’t do a very good job of responding to that,” Dykes said. “I was really impressed with their (UH’s) focus and attitude. I could tell their players were into it and focused. They had very good look about them.”