[EricH]

I'm going to lay this out as clearly as I can. I was reffing at that event, so I was there on the field. (BTW, I can tell some of ya didn't see the head ref at IE clearly. Just sayin'.)

When a dead-ball card showed up, the first ref to spot it would get on the radio and call it in. (We all had headsets.) The head ref would then check that the card WAS showing and press her input panel.

The problem was, somewhere in the system, the signal was lost. She could have pressed the button 2, 3, 4, 5, 10 times--and the pedestal would NEVER have lit, if it didn't light after the first time. She was NOT happy about THAT! (The odds of the pedestal lighting the first time were about 50-50, as I recall, maybe lower.)

The result of the non-lighting pedestal was a scramble for either the FTA or, more often, the Head Ref down to the end of the field to TELL the alliance that they could remove the ball from the pedestal--which some HPs were pretty slow to figure out that when the Head Ref says to do something, just DO IT! (Hint to all HPs reading this: If the Head Ref says something, it means that you almost certainly WON'T be penalized for doing what the Head Ref says.) Once the alliance is told, then there's whatever delay the HP puts in by being slow.



Oh, and I can tell you why they don't give the alliances a dead-ball button. In addition to the normal interface issues with any new sensor (at 2/field, plus a spare/field), you'd have to rig something in code or hardware so that it could only be hit--and register--once, but still be reset for the next match.