When the official score is wrong

[Smash Williams]

Oh tiny college sports, you make me so crazy.

Official who has the call clearly signals a 3-pointer made but the official scorer puts it up as two and there's no correction. Do you go with the score on the board and on the stats or the score that's, you know, correct?

 

[Babs]

Or, how about when they attribute the scoring to the wrong player. That happens far too many times as well.

 

[doggieseatdoggies]

From the DMN thread, and the looming boss that is yours from advertising, call and ask them which score would bring in a few more dollars...does one team attract more subscribers, is there a player whose parents are huge advertisers. Accuracy? Ethics? It won't matter.

 

[2muchcoffeeman]

Oh tiny college sports, you make me so crazy.

Official who has the call clearly signals a 3-pointer made but the official scorer puts it up as two and there's no correction. Do you go with the score on the board and on the stats or the score that's, you know, correct?

Scoreboard operator should always defer to whatever the official stats are. If there's a question, they can check with the referees during a stoppage to see who called what.

I've been in many halftime/postgame conversations with the official scorekeeper, the other reporter, a radio guy or two, both benches' scorebook/stat keepers and the people keeping the running PBP for the official stats trying to figure out where an error crept in. These things can be worked out.

 

[RickStain]

Depends on whether it helps or hurts the team you want to win.

 

[93Devil]

The official book is the official book. If it says 85, and it's 86, it's 85.

I would feel very uneasy if the official book used an eraser.

 

[2muchcoffeeman]

The official book is the official book. If it says 85, and it's 86, it's 85.

I would feel very uneasy if the official book used an eraser.

I've seen it many times. There's a reason they use pencil rather than pen.

 

[writingump]

Always use the official book, even when you know it's wrong. There's been times when I've wanted to say that something's wrong, but all we're doing is reporting the event, not trying to alter it.

 

[Babs]

Always use the official book, even when you know it's wrong. There's been times when I've wanted to say that something's wrong, but all we're doing is reporting the event, not trying to alter it.

But I don't want to lie about what I saw either. So when the official scoring differs from what I know to be true, I say things like the scoring "was credited to Joe Blow." Then I can sleep at night.

 

[Den1983]

Always go by the official book. It's frustrating, I know, but there's a reason they're the "official" book. Plus, there's nothing wrong with bringing up the difference and seeing what they say, or if the other bookkeeper had the same thing.

 

[Smash Williams]

Always use the official book, even when you know it's wrong. There's been times when I've wanted to say that something's wrong, but all we're doing is reporting the event, not trying to alter it.

But isn't reporting the event reporting what actually happened, as opposed to the (incorrect) official version?

That's where I get stuck on it. Some statistics are a matter of interpretation and can legitimately been seen several different ways. But the score is the score, and having the box say a team scored 55 doesn't mean that's what happened if they actually scored 56.

I would feel differently if the officials said an obvious 3 was a 2. That's part of the built in human error factor, like a bad foul call. But scorers don't make judgment calls on scores. It's not like they can decide if it's a 2 or a 3. It was a clearly (and ruled by the officials) a 3 and simply recorded incorrectly.

In this particular case, the mistake was brought up and the scorekeeper said something to the effect of, "We knew something was wrong but we didn't want to bother the refs so what we have is what's official." It frustrated me.

 

[deskslave]

Report that there was a discrepancy if you want. But the official score is the official score, period.

You can no more report the 'correct' score in this situation than you could report that the U.S. beat the Soviet Union in 1972.

Consider the extreme of the situation: If the score was 85-85, and you knew it was really 86-85, but the book didn't reflect that, would you not report that it went to overtime?

Of course not. You would report the discrepancy, and then report the overtime.

Same here.

 

[writingump]

I can certainly feel your frustration, Babs and Smash Williams. The fan in me would want the fairest possible outcome. But like Deskslave says, we have to report what's official. And if it's incorrect, run with the discrepancy. It just might make your story a lot meatier.

 

[zebracoy]

I covered a Thanksgiving high school football game one morning a few years back where a kid lunged for ball in the end zone, was under it enough to pull it close to him, landed, the ball rolled out and he scooped it back in under him, all before the officials could see it happened.

It was like a 63-14 game, but when I described that score - the first of the game - I made it clear the kid didn't catch it.

 

[doogie448]

We just had this situation in a girls basketball game recently. During a snow make-up (we get a couple of those a year here in the Midwest) there was a scoring mixup against both teams since the regular people weren't working the game. I didn't cover it, but this is the short version from the guy who was there. They fixed one team, but screwed up the other one worse. They didn't credit a girl with a free throw that she made on the scoreboard. In the end it didn't effect anything because they would have won anyway, but a girl on the team that got screwed hit a half-courter at the buzzer. They still wouldn't have won even if the board was right, but who knows how that would have affected momentum.
So our reporter gets back to the office, calls the SE and asks our veteran reporter what to call the score in the story. He was told to go with his score because he was taking play-by-play and the scoreboard operator wasn't and could account for all the points. His biggest quandry was who to take the points from in his box if we went with the "official" score

 

[Colin Dunlap]

Maybe this is just me, but I cannot even believe this is a debate.

 

[2underpar]

official book is official book.

 

[RedCanuck]

official book is official book.

Agreed, but sometimes you'd like to tell the schools to at least find someone watching the game/trained to keep the official book. Often, in this area, it's students who need volunteer hours to graduate and often, the quality (or sometimes the lack thereof) shows.

 

[Roving_Gambler]

Tracking stats in a real-time environment always results in errors. From preps to the pros. Elias, the official statistician for most of the major pro sports, will make tweaks days and weeks after a game. If newspapers re-ran a "corrected" box score from MLB or NBA every time Elias adjusted stats, well ... let's just say no one has the newshole to even attempt that.

When you know there's something wrong, approach the scorekeeper and talk it out. I would bet in most instances you can come to an agreement. If not, and you feel that the stats discrepancy is pertinent, it's fair game to mention it.

We all know how SIDs in particular cook the books so that their star players are in the best position to earn "positive media coverage" for achieving a milestone or earning all-something team accolades. It's our responsibility to make sure what we're reporting is accurate.

But, ultimately, if the school or official scorer stands firm, then even when it's wrong, it's right.

 

[expendable]

official book is official book.

Agreed, but sometimes you'd like to tell the schools to at least find someone watching the game/trained to keep the official book. Often, in this area, it's students who need volunteer hours to graduate and often, the quality (or sometimes the lack thereof) shows.

I ****ing hate kid scorekeepers. Earlier this week, I had a dispute with the scorebook and scoreboard, which relented to the book without question. The kid keeping the home book gave a three-point shot two points just before the end of the quarter. My notes were correct with the scoreboard until they adjusted at the end of the quarter. When I questioned, they gave the "home book" response. No more than one minute before the end of the quarter, the home team was charged with a technical because he had left the name out of the team's sixth-man. Yeah, the veteran sportswriter was wrong, while the kid who can't copy down a typed roster list was correct. The home team wound up getting beat by 50 points. It would've been 49 had thier student scorekeeper actually been able to keep a straight book.