According to rule 1.3.2 teams can only request an official review for the final jam until 30 seconds after that jam has ended. According to Officiating Procedures 2.6 the JT is thus supposed to blow a rolling whistle 30 seconds after the last jam has ended. It would thus be highly problematic if the correct score for the last jam would only be displayed after this time had already elapsed.
In my opinion the most logical approach to resolve this issue would be for officials to be able to call an OTO in case of any issues with the final score, even when the period clock is already at 0. This would then stop the 30 second count down for the JT to end the period. In fact the last jam would be handled exactly the same as any other jam, where an OTO must be called before the next jam is started, if there is an issue with the displayed score.
This seems however not to be allowed according to the rules, since rule 1.3 says, that time outs can only be called between jams.
How is this situation supposed to be handled?
Rule 1.3 seems to be contradictory, anyway, since it defines official reviews as a form of time out, but then allows for official reviews to be called after the period clock has ended (i.e. not between jams). Is there something I am missing?
30 seconds after the last jam has ended, it is also too late to change the points. This follows from 3.5, “If there are fewer than 2 minutes in the game remaining on the period clock, score corrections must be made before the start (rather than the end) of the Jam after the one in which the error occurred” – the end-of-period part is implicit here, but in my view, it applies here as well. The reason is exactly the one you brought up! The teams deserve a chance to review changes to points.
Official reviews are timeouts most of the time because they stop the period clock. Even after the game is over, an official review can sometimes (albeit quite rarely) per 1.1, “Additional Jams,” which further qualifies it as a timeout.
Would you agree in that case, that the rules implicitly allow for an official timeout in the time after the period clock has stopped, but 30 seconds have not yet passed since the end of the last jam? It seems to me, that the alternative would be kind of absurd.
Lets consider the following two scenarios:
At the end of the jam there are 25 seconds remaining on the period clock, 20 seconds later the jammer ref notices that the displayed score is wrong. Since the period clock is still running they definitely are allowed to call an official timeout. This allows for the issue to be addressed, before giving the teams the possibility to take a timeout or demand an official review.
The same scenario, but at the end of the jam only 15 seconds remain on the period clock. When the jammer ref notices 20 seconds later, that the score is wrong, the period clock has already been at 0 for 5 seconds. So what happens now?
I think it would be absurd, if the second situation would be handle completely differently than the first one. Since the rules do not outline any procedure to follow in the second scenario, I would thus argue, that the only reasonable interpretation is, that an official timeout can indeed be called in the second scenario, too. It would also be kind of weird, if this unnamed “30 second clock” were the only clock in the game which the officials cannot stop.
After this timeout the head ref than should give the teams the possibility to call for an official review (in the spirit of rule 1.3.3)
I would hope that everyone will agree that the spirit of the rules is that teams should be given a fair opportunity to OR the score for the last jam.
If in case of a late change this is done by explicitly calling an OTO after the end of the game or simply by delaying marking the score as final by a reasonable amount of time seems to be an implementation detail to me.
Side note: If there is a score change very late in the lineup that can also effectively nullify teams’ opportunity to review the decision. While decisions from the prior lineup can be reviewed after the following jam, score corrections can no longer be made at that time.
(edited) Yes, I agree with this and have seen it many times.
You might want to ask the CRG folks to add this clock in so it is clearer! The WFTDA is not in charge of scoreboard software, we only require that various pieces of game information be displayed.
But, my understanding is the same as yours. Official Timeouts and Official Reviews can be called within the 30 seconds from the end of any jam, regardless of the period clock. I have seen both many times. I have also seen the scenario you describe, albeit rarely, which is that the period clock is at 0, the jam ends, we go into OTO and after we figure it out there’s also an OR before the game formally ends.