‘What do you want?’ French-Canadian referee botches the start of championship game with embarrassing mistake

A Canadian Football League referee is making headlines for all the wrong reasons after making a hilarious error to start off the championship game.

At the 111th Grey Cup in Vancouver, Canada, veteran official Benoit Major took center stage in what is typically the referee’s time to shine: the coin toss.

Along with Coinbase Canada CEO Lucas Matheson, Major stood between the captains of the Toronto Argonauts and the Winnipeg Blue Bombers.

“All right, Lucas, get up here,” the referee told Matheson. “Please do us the honors,” he continued, handing the coin to the CEO.

As the crypto boss flipped the coin, the referee attempted to grab his arm to stop him, realizing he forgot the most integral part of the coin toss. Major forgot to ask the Argonauts’ team captains whether they were choosing heads or tails.

“Check, check check,” Major said in a French-Canadian accent as the coin hit the ground.

“I have to ask … ‘what do you want?'” Major said, while picking up the coin.

With the football players clearly unimpressed — as this is the most important game of their lives — the referee struck a quick pose in jest while laughing; the players did not find it funny.

“All right, Toronto,” Major restarted, putting his arm on Toronto’s DaVaris Daniels’ shoulder out of embarrassment.

“You’re the visiting team; what’s your choice?”

After Daniels called “heads,” the referee handed the coin back to the Coinbase CEO.

“Okay, Lucas, take two.”

As is a growing trend in sports, the CFL chose to lean into the silly moment and posted the coin toss in full on the league’s X page.

However, the league didn’t exactly draw attention to it, writing, “The coin has been tossed, let’s play some football!”

The fun starts at about 1:30 in the video.

‘I’m a bit disfigured.’

The Argonauts lost the real coin toss, but went on to win their 19th Grey Cup, 41-24.

This also isn’t the first bout of bad luck Major has had while refereeing an Argonauts game. In 2014, the Montreal native took a cleat to the face that resulted in his left eye being swollen shut.

“I’m a bit disfigured,” Major said in 2014, according to Yahoo Sports. “I’ve got swelling and discoloration going on, so it’s interesting, I guess.”

The Canadian added, “My girls say if it were Halloween, I wouldn’t need any makeup.”

Looking back, one of the most iconic coin-toss botches came on Thanksgiving day in 1998, when the Pittsburgh Steelers’ Jerome Bettis appeared to call “tails” during the toss to start overtime.

NFL referee Phil Luckett said that Bettis started to say “heads” before switching his answer.

After the Lions won the coin toss, they got the ball and kicked a game-winning field goal three minutes into OT.

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