Ray Ratto has a column at ESPN.com defending the Baylor call... sort of.

He rails against anyone who says that the refs shouldn't decide the game. He says that the refs always decide the game, both with calls and with no-calls. He is right, but only in a trivial sense.

When we say "don't decide the game," or "let the players play," it's another way of saying this: lay off the whistle, and err on the side of no-calls.

As I've said before, refs in college (especially the women's side) call too many anticipation calls, too many touch fouls, and too much that should be let go as incidental contact.

When you err on the side of making the call, you don't just "decide the game" in Ratto's sense, you also slow the game down to a boring pace, and you send the good players to the bench. If the refs let more go, the game might get more physical and less open offensively, but I think it's worth the risk.

The alternative to the current system isn't, as Ratto says, a system full of cowardly refs. The alternative is NBA-style refs who don't call a foul unless the act affected the play. I think that would be better than what we have now.

Ratto also says that you can only criticize the call against Baylor if you "believe that there are different standards for different fouls at different times."

That claim is just stupid. There usually is a different standard at the very end of the game, and that's probably a good thing.

But regardless of whether there are different standards at different times, it shouldn't have been a foul. The ball was loose. Neither player had position for the rebound. They came from opposite sides moving forward, both looking up at the ball, and ran into each other. The hit was hard, and Butts went down, but that makes no difference under the rules.

The play was squarely within the definition of "incidental contact." It shouldn't have been called at any time in the game.