{"id":27083,"date":"2005-02-04T22:13:43","date_gmt":"2005-02-05T04:13:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.uscho.com\/2005\/02\/04\/between-the-lines-feb-4-2005\/"},"modified":"2010-08-17T19:56:07","modified_gmt":"2010-08-18T00:56:07","slug":"between-the-lines-feb-4-2005","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wwwproxy.uscho.com\/2005\/02\/04\/between-the-lines-feb-4-2005\/","title":{"rendered":"Between the Lines: Feb. 4, 2005"},"content":{"rendered":"
Cornell coach Mike Schafer recently hauled off on this year’s officiating directive, not so much on the theory, but the practice.<\/p>\n
Schafer told the Ithaca Journal: “The whole game, the way it has changed has been ridiculous. I’ll state it publicly. They are rewarding players, college players, for turning their back when they are going to get hit. They reward college players to dive when there is no contact. And making the referees’ job really hard. So what do they do? They choose to call the easiest, [when] a guy goes down whenever there is contact. …<\/p>\n
“There are two ways to play in this game. One is to play with respect and stay on your feet and be strong, and the other way is to dive all over the place and to try to draw penalties.”<\/p>\n
In theory, there is every reason to fully support this year’s officiating directive. But there’s been a growing sense that officials are not concentrating on the right thing. Though Schafer states the point perhaps more strenuously than I would, it’s a real problem that the “weak” are rewarded. In fact, that is not a new problem — it has always been a problem, and it’s a point Schafer would make in the past, even before the new directive came into play. In fact, this obstruction crackdown was supposed to address the very problem he talks about — that by calling obstruction away from the play, regardless of whether a player goes down, it helps a team like his that is strong on their skates.<\/p>\n
Schafer puts a premium emphasis on strength and conditioning, and teaches his guys to stay on their feet and fight through the nonsense. Other teams will just dive and try to take a call. Theoretically then, the initiative should help Cornell because by calling obstruction even when guys aren’t going down, it should draw calls anyway.<\/p>\n
Problem is, the officials seem to be falling back, too often, into calling more of the stuff where guys go down — knee-jerking that it’s obstruction when, in fact, it might not have been. And likewise, not calling enough of the stuff that’s obstruction but the guy stays on his feet.<\/p>\n
Obstruction and going down are not necessarily connected. You can be obstructed and still be on your feet. And you can be knocked over without having been fouled. In an attempt to make it seem like they are cracking down, some officials are reverting back to making the lazy call.<\/p>\n
Overall, I still think the initiative has been a good thing, but this is something that everyone needs to keep an eye on.<\/p>\n
The interesting thing, though, is that Cornell’s special teams is so good, this is practically to Cornell’s benefit anyway. Schafer would prefer to play 5-on-5 all day long, but he’s also proven to be a tremendous special teams coach.<\/p>\n
When I last wrote about the Canisius situation, I tried to point out some concerns about the firing of coach Brian Cavanaugh. It was said that it’s too hard for the public to ever know the truth on what happened; and because he’s well-known by fans and media for being accessible and a big booster of the sport, that he was more likely to be given benefit of the doubt.<\/p>\n
Some of this was misinterpreted. For one, no one is absolving him of guilt if he did the things some people accuse him of. The point is not that he should<\/em> be given a pass, just that it’s human nature to give benefit of a doubt to someone you know. That’s why the hockey community is naturally skeptical of a coach being fired like that. The facts, however, should absolutely be pursued.<\/p>\n But the other point is, we’ll just never know. No matter how much those within the team think they know about Cavanaugh — and I’m sure they genuinely feel it — there is no way for outsiders to ever know exactly what to believe. That’s just the way it is.<\/p>\n Nobody on the current team is willing to speak, or is legally obligated not to speak. There is still work to do in contacting old players, but concentrating on that misses the point. If 30 players came out of the woodwork to tell us that Cavanaugh was too much of a bully to his teams, it still would not get to the heart of the bigger matter — or at least the matter that I am interested in.<\/p>\n For one, the players’ list of grievances, submitted to the administration, did not list any untoward physical conduct by Cavanaugh towards the team. It was a laundry list of petty reasons, which may or may not be fair.<\/p>\n But the bigger point is that no one in this entire mess comes out smelling good. That’s really the issue. Cavanaugh certainly has some explaining to do. But, for my money, the people that still need to do the most explaining are the players and the Canisius administration. Their obfuscation, and the general environment at Canisius, is really the bigger matter right now, not whether Cavanaugh was a bully to his players.<\/p>\n Athletic director Tim Dillon is really starting to take heat, after what appears to have been an effective smokescreen that led people to believe it was Canisius vice president Ellen Conley that made the decision to fire Cavanaugh, not Dillon. What was not said was that Dillon met with players at their apartment five days before the firing decision, a move that has been widely criticized as being inappropriate. Conley has also told sources that the only thing the Buffalo News article got right about her was the spelling of her name.<\/p>\n And certainly the players still have a lot of explaining to do. Public exposure, drunkenness, trashing hotel rooms to the point of players getting injured. All of this has occured since Cavanaugh’s firing.<\/p>\n