This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2010, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.

In every NCAA college football replay booth, there's a three-person crew: a replay official, a video technician and a communicator. As reported by the San Diego Union-Tribune in this article, the video technician in the replay booth for Saturday's BYU-SDSU game was a BYU employee, Chad Bunn. That's relevant, obviously, because both coaches in the game, BYU's Bronco Mendenhall and SDSU's Brady Hoke, challenged rulings on the field in the game. Both involved fumbles. Both coaches lost their challenges, as the head replay official let the calls on the field stand. Of course, the call that Hoke challenged should have been overturned. Clearly, BYU running back J.J. DiLuigi fumbled in the third quarter before his knee hit the ground. Monday, the MWC suspended the three people in the booth one game. The replay official, according to the Union-Tribune, was Mike Angelis of Reno, Nev. The identity of the communicator is not yet known. Here's the MWC's statement when reports surfaced that the three booth workers had been suspended: "Consistent with existing evaluative protocols for its on-field and instant replay officiating systems, the MWC has conducted a thorough review of the play in question to assess whether a correct call was made and, if not, identify the source of any error(s). This has included extensive video analysis, interviews with all involved parties and investigation of any potential technical malfunctions. Once the final determination was made, appropriate actions were taken via established internal conference channels."

It is the second time this season that the Aztecs have been victimized by a bad call (or non-call). In their only other loss, an obvious blocking-in-the-back call was missed on the play in which Missouri scored the last-minute, 68-yard touchdown.

At the very least, BYU officials and MWC officials should explain why a BYU employee was allowed to be part of the replay staff, and whether having school personnel work in replay booths is a common practice at venues across the league.

——————————- Mendenhall was asked about both calls that were challenged in his Monday morning news conference: Regarding DiLuigi's fumble, he said: "Didn't see it very clearly.....I think that would be one that, based on the camera angle, it would have to be just right, and you go back to the threshold of indisputable video evidence. If it is not clearly the other way from what it has been called, then it is going to go the way it has been called. So either one of them, if they were called the other way, would have stayed the other way as well. So that's kind of the tricky part....The longer it goes means to me that you could probably call it either way, but it defaults to how it was called on the field." Mendenhall was also asked about the call he challenged. SDSU's Ronnie Hillman lost the ball near the BYU 9-yard-line, and the Cougars recovered. The question was whether Hillman lost the ball before he was out of bounds, and whether the BYU player who recovered the ball was out of bounds when he first touched it. "Coaches didn't tell me anything in the booth. Actually, the fan reaction to the one I challenged was [the reason for challenging in]. Because that many people thought it was good, I thought it must be good. I didn't see video replay. What I was told after was that we did recover it, but our player was laying out of bounds. ...Is what I was told," Mendenhall said.