Every week, PowerMizzou.com publisher Gabe DeArmond answers questions from Tiger fans in the mailbag. This format allows for a more expansive answer than a message board post. Keep your eye out each week to submit your question for the mailbag or send them to powermizzou@gmail.com. On to this week's inquiries.
Tiger Cruise asks: Should there be an official who watches the game on TV and has the authority to stop the game if he sees an egregious missed call? The NFL does this ok with buzzing the officials when they should review a play. In basketball I feel like it should be even easier because a lot of the missed calls are very obvious.
GD: First off, we have to establish what you can and can't review. You can review rules. You can't review judgment. So if you want to look at a block/charge, you can look at whether the guy's feet were in the circle, but you can't open up the can of worms that you go to replay to see if a guy was set and to decide if a ref made the right call. It's too subjective. And largely, I think that's what we do now. I don't think there is a designated person watching on TV, but if officials think there's something close enough that it needs to be reviewed, they do. Coaches can talk to them about taking a look as well. At least I assume that's what they're doing because they spend as much time at the monitor as on the court in most games.
I've been saying for two years I want to get rid of replay because I don't think it works. Too often they go to the monitor and still make calls that seem incorrect. And, again, there are too many things that aren't reviewable. Why can't you review basket interference? Why can't you review a kicked ball like at the end of the Tennessee/Missouri women's game? I have no idea. You just can't. If replay worked, I'd be fine with it. Since it doesn't, just play the game and live with the fact that sometimes officials are going to screw up some calls.
mexicojoe asks: What is your assessment of the Hearnes Center renovation?Any chance it will ever see regular season basketball game(s) again?
GD: The extent of my knowledge of the renovations is a couple of pictures I saw on Twitter. They looked nice.
GD: It's too bad that an athletic department that is already strapped for cash had to end up spending however much money it did on that building. I mean, when you're hurting for money dumping a fair amount into renovations for a building used by volleyball and wrestling probably wouldn't be line A on the budget. Nothing against those sports, but they aren't generating revenue, which is what the school needs more than anything right now.
As far as regular season basketball games, I don't see it. First of all, how do you do seating for the people that have season tickets in a different building? Second, you've got one of the nicer basketball arenas in the country (even 15 years after it opened). I don't think you take games out of there to go to a building that is 30 years older for a sense of nostalgia. The truth is half the people who would be there would never have seen a game in Hearnes anyway.
