The WSJ take on the bottle-throwing incident

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In college football, there is the right call, and the wrong call, and apparently, there is no need to be sportsmanlike about it anymore.

All you have to do is throw a fit and a few hundred water bottles—and eventually you’ll get your way.

What other conclusion can be reached from Saturday’s fiasco at the Texas-Georgia game, in which officials flagged the Longhorns for a critical pass interference penalty, only to reverse it minutes later, after grouchy Texas fans (many in the student section, The Daily Texan reported) rained a fusillade of single-use plastic bottles and other trash on to the gridiron?

What are we doing here, friends?

It’s hard not to see Texas Football’s Impromptu Recycling Night as another example of our cultural slide into Tantrum Nation, a depressingly self-interested society in which what matters most is who whines the loudest—and civility takes a back seat to classlessness.

“We’ve set a precedent,” Georgia coach Kirby Smart said later. “If you throw a bunch of stuff on the field and endanger athletes, you’ve got a chance to get your call reversed.”

Hard to argue with Visor Man Kirb there. What an embarrassment to Texas and the Southeastern Conference—not to mention an affront to the good, stainless steel folks of the reusable water bottle industry.

The SEC fined Texas $250,000, a pittance barely enough to buy a third-string punter. Texas released a meek statement: While we deeply appreciate the passion and loyalty of our fan base at the University of Texas at Austin, we do not condone the unsportsmanlike conduct that was exhibited by some individuals throwing objects onto the field during last night’s game…

While we deeply appreciate the passion and loyalty of our fan base…Who is Texas trying to placate here? People who threw water bottles and missed?

Now I know what you’re thinking: Jason, settle down, you old crab. The officials ultimately made the right call. That’s the bottom line.

To that I’ll say this: I am an old crab. And I agree it was a terrible call, really lousy, and might have meant something in a game that Texas wasn’t being thoroughly handled in. (As it turned out, the No. 1 Longhorns scored shortly after the interception, but still wound up being thumped 30-15, dropping to No. 5 in the rankings.)

But what was very obvious to anyone watching was that the bottle meltdown, uh, worked—the lengthy cleanup delay appeared to give the tormented officials breathing room to consult each other and flip a controversial call.

Doesn’t the water thrower think: Well, I did my job? (I wonder: Is some enterprising student going to get a water bottle name, image, likeness deal?)

What message does this send for the future? Tantrums away? What happens in the upcoming 12-team playoff when mighty Indiana is playing undefeated Navy for the National Championship (don’t laugh; it could happen) and the Hoosiers don’t like a call on the field? Kroger bottle hailstorm?

If that is the bottom line, count me out.
Like most fiascos in sports, this has all been a long time coming. The tiresome obsessiveness with instant replay and slo-mo forensics has made too many fans think that games should be immaculate events with no room for human interpretation or error.

This obstinate fussiness, routinely soft-pedaled as the pursuit of “fairness,” has infected sports from the big time professionals all the way down to Pee-wee weekends.

It’s why NFL games are constantly delayed by “challenges” of pinkie touches and out-of-bounds toes and you need at least three Ph.D.s to know what a catch is anymore. It’s why the final two minutes of too many NBA games have become borderline unwatchable. It’s why the mention of VAR makes a European soccer fan crawl under a coffee table. It’s why over-criticized youth sports referees and umpires are bailing by the busload.

This pursuit of “fairness”—a lot of it driven by ever-accessible gambling apps—sells a dubious idea: that sports, or life, will ever truly be fair. Setbacks aren’t there to overcome—they’re to be reviewed and overturned.

Don’t like it? Don’t put your head down and try harder.

Just throw a plastic bottle. Throw a spiral, you might even get recruited!

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