Here's the scene:
The score is 38-0. There are just over two minutes remaining. It's 4th down and there's only 1 yard to go. The backup quarterback is in the game. He runs a QB sneak and lurches forward, all 6-foot-6 of him. He gets stopped after gaining ... well, pretty much a yard, probably.
The head linesman marks the spot of the ball. The chain crew comes out to measure. And he's... four inches short.
This all actually happened near the tail end of the Panthers-Falcons game on Sunday, and due to a hot mic issue, we know referee Tony Corrente and his crew weren't all that happy about the spot of the ball.
In a great example of life imitating art, referee Tony Corrente inadvertently left his microphone on for an officials’ huddle during the two-minute warning near the end of the game. Two mild profanities were broadcast over the live mic, along with a lot of joshing between the officials about one of them marking Derek Anderson’s fourth-down quarterback sneak “4 inches” short of a first down on the previous play. If Anderson had made it, the Panthers could have run out the clock and the game would have ended quicker.
“We were 4 inches from going home!” one of the officials said. One also said they should give a nickname to their colleague who judged it not to be a first down and extended the game: “Mr. Four Inches.”
This, actually, is not the first hot mic issue for Corrente in his career as a ref. Three years ago, Corrente was fined for leaving his mic on and cursing at another member of his crew for all the stadium and television audience to hear. We'll just have to wait and see if that happens to him again.
