In re LSU-Alabama, Bill Stokes, the SEC's director of officiating, said: "We should not have put 5.1 back on the clock. That was the only thing that was done incorrectly." (Emphasis added.)

I'm not sure that's quite right. Let's walk through it.

The shot goes. Apparently one official signaled a two and another signaled a three. As I understand it, the refs are supposed to look at each other to confirm the call. They should have noticed the disagreement and stopped play. The failure to do so, I would say, was an error.

But the game was moving very fast, and LSU inbounded immediately. The refs' failure to get it straightened out before play resumed was a reasonable error, and perhaps even an unavoidable one.

Once they got to the end of regulation (the next dead ball), they did the right thing by reviewing the shot. They said that the third angle on the television monitor "clearly" showed a two. We also saw three angles on TV; none was clear.

I remain frustrated by their insistence that the third was clear. But I still allow for the possibility that they saw something (another angle or better resolution) that I didn't. I tried to contact Bill Stokes to clarify this, but I wasn't successful.

If they saw what I saw, they were in a tough spot. One ref had called it a three, one a two, and the replay was inconclusive. At that point, all you can do is make your best judgment, see which ref had a clearer view and a more confident feeling, and go with that. I think they did that, and decided it was a two.

The decision to replay the 5.1 was, under NCAA rules, an error. But I can't be too critical of the error, because it seems to me like this was just a crazy situation that hadn't come up before -- I'm not sure the people who wrote the rules ever thought of this. Even though the current rules don't allow a re-play in that situation, they should.

It was a mess, but the mess was caused as much by wild game circumstances and a weird rules quirk as it was by any officiating mistakes.

My biggest remaining criticism is that I wish Bill Stokes, Brian Enterline, and other officials would have made a better effort for public transparency. I don't know why it took two days to admit the rules mistake. And I'd still like to know (1) which official called a two, (2) why they didn't recognize the problem sooner, (3) which replay was "clear" to them, and (4) whether they had something different on their screen than I had on mine.