As far as I can tell, that wasn’t actually an inadvertent whistle. The ref at the three point line blew the whistle, made the twirly goaltending sign. The ref coming from the baseline then followed with the same twirly sign.
So they …
- Called a goaltend while the ball was live
- Blew the whistle before Barney got rid of the ball
- Reviewed the goaltend call, where there really may have been some contact with the rim by a PSU dude
- Reversed the call anyway
- Decided that the whistle meant they couldn’t allow the basket
- Debated whether they should really truly make such a dumb call, and whether they should just come up with a way to just allow the obvious basket, and decided that they’d rather just f*ck NU
That was a ~5-minute review, and most of it was a discussion of whether they really truly should screw NU. And they settled on HELL YES.
The NFL has a good rule about a clear and immediate fumble recovery. That type of rule should have applied here. Barney made the shot as the whistle blew. He was totally unguarded and nobody stopped playing at the whistle. Everybody was in the air or landing or just out of position. The whistle had absolutely no effect on whether or not Barney made the putback.
Gross negligence could be proven in court on this one. Actual malice would be tougher, but possible depending on the jury.
