Replay official Riese takes this blown call pretty hard

Guest column: John Canzano

Published: September 20, 2006

The seventh threatening telephone call at Gordon Riese's home came a few minutes after eight o'clock on Monday morning. It was from an Oklahoma fan who told Riese, the Pacific-10 Conference replay official from Saturday's Ducks-Sooners game, he was going to fly to Portland, find the family home, and kill Riese and his wife.

"I called the police," said Riese, 64, "then, I unplugged the phone."

The deputy who arrived to take the report assured Riese that murderers don't typically alert their victims before flying in from out of state to commit the crime. Then, the deputy added, "Maybe you should leave town for a couple of days, if it makes you feel better."

Football is a game, you're thinking.

Right up to the point where an Oregon player touches an onside-kick attempt a step too early, turning the scramble for the ball into a melee where players are rushing the field celebrating, and the ball is squirting through everyone's legs like they were wickets in a human croquet match. Then, the officials on the field blow the call. Then, the review process, instituted to rectify situations just like this, upholds the bad call, causing many of us, including some self-important university president at Oklahoma, to wonder, "Was Mr. Magoo in the replay booth?"

Well, no.

It was Gordon Riese in the booth. He has a name, he has a life.

And after visiting with him on Monday, and learning more from some others about what happened in that review booth, I'm convinced that every honk who criticized Riese in the last 72 hours owes the man a swift apology.

Said Riese: "I'm having a difficult time letting the blown call go. I always prided myself on getting it right. I didn't get the job done. I didn't get it right."

More on the blown call later.

First, you need to know that Riese met his wife, Susan, while they were high school students. They had a math course together, and after an extended illness put her behind in school, the teacher assigned Gordon to be her tutor.

They've been married 42 years, had two children, and two grandchildren — Jeff, 5, and Alex, 4

And you should know that Gordon's real job was teaching math for 34 years.

Until his retirement from on-field officiating two years ago, Riese was well respected. He worked Rose Bowls and Fiesta Bowls. When you officiate for three decades, you come to understand that you're going to make some mistakes.

He just doesn't like making them, which is why he was one of the good ones.

In 1982, during the Cal-Stanford "Big Game," Riese was working as the line judge.

He was running alongside the play during the wild finish, and should have been in position to see the fifth lateral, which appears to be forward.

Ask Riese about it and he'll tell you that he was out of position. He'd mistakenly headed to the goal line, where he was swarmed by the Stanford band, and couldn't see the lateral.

Two years ago, after he'd retired, the conference talked him into the replay booth because it wanted someone familiar with the rules up there.

"It's a different pressure being in the booth versus being on the field," Riese said.

"It's a whole different ballgame. Haven't learned to deal with that kind of stress."

Riese, who is paid $400 a game to work the replay booth, said he knew almost immediately that the call was blown. He called it "instinct."

He'd looked hard at 10 plays during the game, stopped to analyze five of them, and overturned three of those five on-field calls, getting them right.

But it was that terrible onside kick that he replayed in his mind, and agonized over as he drove his brown Toyota van the two hours back to Portland after the game.

Said Riese: "I was so unsettled, I probably shouldn't have driven."

When Riese arrived home, he discovered his wife had videotaped the game, but he couldn't bring himself to watch it. He already knew what would be on the tape.

So Riese just sat on the sofa in a daze until the newspaper hit his driveway, and the sun came up.

You should know, the man everyone is pinning this loss on didn't sleep after the game.

"We're so worried about his health," Karen Jackson, Riese's daughter, said.

"Dad has high blood pressure and right now we can't get his diastolic under 100."