Happy Ending for USC

This is why mamas don’t let their children grow up to be referees.

Harvey Jones was the side judge in Saturday’s USC-UCLA game at the Coliseum, and, suffice to say, he will not be given the key to the city of Westwood for a while. Make that never.

Jones was the official on the play that gave USC a 17-7 lead early in the final period of this game between two teams struggling to take something out of seasons that have been, well, dreadful.

When they were finished and USC had won, 17-7, the Trojans had a 5-6 record, with one game left against longtime archrival Louisiana Tech on Friday, and UCLA, a year ago one of the best teams in the country, limped off into the sunset, red-faced and 4-7.

The play was an alley-oop pass, John Fox throwing from back around the 10-yard line and Kareem Kelly playing jump ball with UCLA defensive back Ricky Manning Jr. They both went up and Kelly came down with the ball. He also came down with his left foot out of bounds. They showed it on the big screen a couple of times and Bruin fans roared in anger.

Afterward, the officials did exactly what they should have done. They ‘fessed up to blowing it.

Jim Sprenger, the referee, served as the spokesman afterward, as he should.

“From where Harvey was on the field,” Sprenger said, “he saw the receiver get control of the ball and saw his foot come down in bounds. But he missed the call. He didn’t see the first foot come down out of bounds. He called what he saw.”

Sprenger said that the issue of college rules stating that a pass is complete if the receiver comes down with one foot in bounds is nullified immediately if the first foot that comes down is out of bounds.

“That makes it an incompletion immediately,” he said.

He also said that there was no issue on this play of the defender, Manning, forcing Kelly out of bounds.

Sprenger said that neither he nor any of his fellow officials looked at the replay on the big board--”You can’t start doing that out there,” he said--and added that they didn’t have a real feel for what happened until afterward.

“The observers came in and said the first foot came down out of bounds,” he said. “But it was called and there was nothing we could do.”

It isn’t as if this was an officiating crew made up of fuzzy-faced kids who have little idea what was going on out there. That would have been a more apt description of the two teams.

Sprenger, from Auburn, Wash., has been a Pacific 10 Conference official since 1971, Jones, from Portland, Ore., since 1974. That’s 53 years of experience just with those two.

There could be a case made that, by this point in this excitingly sloppy game, the officials started to make mistakes of fatigue. You try to run up and down the field, keeping track of three interceptions, three fumbles and 13 punts and also call 25 penalties for a total of 194 yards and see whether you don’t start going cross-eyed. Throwing that many flags could easily force cramping of the forearm.

Indeed, one of the game’s highlights was Sprenger’s public-address announcement that, on one play, there were three penalties. This game was an orgy of personal fouls and false starts, and many of the false starts were on plays in which the teams weren’t even supposed to be starting, plays such as field-goal attempts and punts.

If this game was art, it was paint by the numbers.

The reaction to Jones’ call in both locker rooms was varied, and certainly more subdued than the reaction is likely to be among the faithful in Westwood when the officials’ admission of guilt becomes known.

Said Manning: “I wasn’t looking at his feet, but I sure knew it was going to be difficult for him to catch the ball and get both feet down. It is upsetting to know now that it was the wrong call. If it is called right, maybe the offense feeds off of this when they only get three points.”

Or maybe USC scores on the next play, since it was second down.

Bruin Coach Bob Toledo said that one of the officials told him going up the tunnel after the game that they had blown the call and added, “But that was just one play. These things happen.”

Trojan Coach Paul Hackett had little time for the you-won-because-the-refs-screwed-up line of reasoning. “Don’t even start talking to me about calls,” he said. “I can still see R. Jay [Soward] against Arizona State [having a scoring pass taken away from him].”

And then there was Kelly, the benefactor.

“I knew it was controversial, but they called it a touchdown,” he said. “A touchdown is a touchdown.”

Asked if he looked up at the replay on the big board, Kelly smiled and said, “A touchdown is a touchdown.”

And so it went, on a day when the Trojans, deciding eight was enough, ended the streak; a day when USC and UCLA had to match Fox against Ryan McCann at quarterback, a day when Danny Farmer, an All-American wide receiver turned ordinary by the fuzzy-faced cast around him, was forced to circle under passes like a center fielder trying to find the ball in the sun.

It was a game that was not only rough around the edges, but smack dab in the middle too.

Oh, and there was a historical footnote; maybe better described as an ironic historical footnote:

The last time USC beat UCLA at the Coliseum was 1987. In that 17-13 victory, Erik Affholter took a touchdown pass for that final margin midway through the final period. He caught the ball in the end zone from Rodney Peete and held on after juggling it near the chalk. Not much was made of it at the time, but the next week, The Times acquired a photo of the exact moment of the catch and ran it.

It appeared to show that Affholter was out of bounds when he made the catch.