CFL considers rule change after Lions-Als gaffe: report

Hoping to prevent errors like the one made by CFL officials in the disputed match between the Montreal Alouettes and B.C. Lions last week, the league is reportedly looking at changing some of its game rules.

The Globe and Mail is reporting that the league drafted three amendments to its game protocol following a formal protest filed by Montreal this week.

The Als' organization took issue with the fact that the officials denied their game-tying touchdown in the dying minutes of the game because the game supervisor had paged them to examine the game clock.

Even though the game officials didn't get the page in time to stop the play from starting, they called back the touchdown run by Avon Cobourne anyway.

The Alouettes lost the game 19-12.

While the league admitted the officials had been in the wrong, the CFL said it didn't fit the definition of  an "intentional" misapplication of a rule.

The league has responded by putting forward three proposed amendments:

• Game officials are to ignore any page if they do not feel there is enough time to stop a play from beginning. If they determine there is enough time to stop a play, they must do so by blowing a whistle and waving their arms in the air.
• When the ball is put into play by the game officials (and the 20-second clock begins), the game supervisor is not to page the game officials. The one exception to this is if a head coach throws a challenge flag. In that case, the game supervisor is allowed to page the officials after the ball has been put into play and the 20-second clock is running. Officials are to apply the protocol from the first amendment above to determine whether to respond to a page.
• The stadium clock is the responsibility of the seven on-field officials, the scorekeeper and the two head coaches only — not the game supervisor.

"We have to do this because something not desirable happened in a game, the worst-case scenario," CFL director of officiating Tom Higgins told the Globe. "It was a series of misfortune that put us in that position, and we don't want to see it ever happen again. It's a gut-wrenching feeling knowing something you are responsible for goes wrong like that."

For now, officials are not to respond to late pages if there isn't enough time to stop a play from starting, he said.

"In the interim, we feel we have the ability to make sure plays are not disrupted by pagers or late challenges without [waiting for a ruling by] the competition committee," Higgins said.