SEC, take note.
The Pac-12’s recently announced initiative to improve its football officiating includes the removal of 11 officials who worked games a year ago, the conference confirmed Wednesday.
Mike Pereira, named last month the Pac-12’s interim coordinator of football officiating, said there will be 16 new officials in the conference next year, hired away from the Big 12, Mountain West and WAC to replace those who were dismissed (along with the 11 who weren’t invited back, another retired).
It’s not that hard to improve the quality of officiating. If you want to, anyway.
… The overhaul of officiating came at the urging of conference commissioner Larry Scott, who took over on July 1, 2009.
“It’s a huge culture change, and there has not been this type of turnover in officials probably in a long time,” Pereira said.
He said the changes come as part of what is “a new accountability and a new emphasis on training that I think is good for officiating, period.”
Kudos to Larry Scott and his conference. You’ve come a long way from Verle Sorgen, baby.
By the way, Pereira is only working with the Pac-12 on an interim basis through next season. Mike Slive, are you paying attention?
Get The Picture 
The SEC could upgrade their officiating by hiring the 11 officals the PAC-12 let go.
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http://instantrimshot.com/
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“clap clap clap”
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I am astonished that none of the new hires come from the SEC. It be just geography, since all the officials seemed to come from neighboring areas, but I dunno……
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Astonished, or disappointed? 😉
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Mike Slive and the SEC officiating. What a duo.
Just came back from a trip to Southeast Asia and China. Amazing the progess in those countries. When you compare them to what is happening in sands of Arabia, you understand what is happening. Needless to say the latter were left in the dirt.
Now Scott seems like a “China” and Slive like those countries still stuck in the days of Lawrence of Arabia. No progess.
And UGA in th past few years… we have suffered the results of pitiful, cowardly, outright stupid calls by officials in the SEC. But I think we have an AD on par … I think he is above…a Scott.
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This would require a culture change that the SEC (really, any established authority in our region) just isn’t ready for: namely killing the good old boy network.
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In a completely different industry, I have some experience with the interim title. There is great freedom in that. What I found is a strong willingness to speak my mind for the good of the organization. I had nothing to lose. Others (understandably) were a lot more cautious in meetings, particularly where there was a perceived political charge to the situation. What did I care? I was only ‘interim’. Still doing it 18 months later by the way.
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… and in the aftermath, the powers that be can always just blame it on the consultant when, in truth, it was they that wanted the change all along.* Truly, this scenario occurs constantly in the private sector.
*Herein lies the crux of the issue as Stoop addressed in his previous comment.
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Accountability is the key t improved performance. Nothing quite get the attention like firing people that are incompetent.
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Absolutely true. Since officials are not protected by unions, there is simply no excuse for not requiring competence at a minimum, excellence would be a nice objective. SEC officials have been horrible since the mid 90s and have continued a downward trend with no signs of a reversal. How the conference that plays the best CFB can tolerate being a national laughing stock regarding such a key area of the game is beyond me.
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Yep
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I agree with Will Trane. Mike Slive and the SEC officiating lives and works in the same office sharing their plans and decisions on how to manage the a game. SEC officiating is still a remnant of when GT was still part of the SEC, that is why it has the look and smell of hypocrisy and incompetence.
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You guys are being too nice. Games are being fixed by the league office to maximize bowl revenue. The bad calls and flagrant no-calls are not an accident. That is how the SEC controls the outcome of the games. Sometimes it doesn’t work (such as when Ole Miss won by clearly stopping FLA on 4th and 1 tackling Tebow well behind the line of scrimmage on national TV-there was no wiggle room in that situation). Other times they are so obvious that you would think that they clearly will be caught (such as the bogus “celebration” call on AJ Green near the end of the LSU-UGA game) but still nobody ever does anything to them. None of this will change until (1) The SEC gets a new Commissioner as he is the person behind it; or (2) A governmental entity with subpoena power and the power to prosecute conducts an investigation that ferrets out the whole stinking bunch.
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Incompetence can often be mistaken for conspiracy.
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The bad calls always seemed to go one way particularly as one got deeper into the season. Too much for it to be coincidence.
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Lets face it the SEC officiating is as bad as any in the US and it is because they treat the guys like government employees. You’ve got a job until retirement. Sure if you fk it up on national TV they might suspend you but short of that you can just sleep walk through a season and make the big part-time bucks. A good first step for the SEC would be to recognize that GT is a prime rival of UGA and not let a GT man ref a game. How many FSU refs does the SEC have? How many Clemson grads? We get screwed every year and every year until next year the ahole in charge was a GT grad but hey that’s just the luck of the draw. I hope the new guy went to any place other than GT.
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I resemble that remark!
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The sec refs are protecting the higher ranked team. Why would slive have a problem with that ? can you oversign refs ?
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SEC ref incompetence has gotten national sports media attention the last two seasons. How does that happen and no one gets pink slipped? Oh, wait, nevermind.
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I was watching Duke play somebody the other night, I disremembers who, and two very iffy calls went against Duke. Coach K blew up and got in the officials ears and got a T, but there were no fouls called against Duke in the next five minutes or so. Why can’t UGA designate someone, {Garner, Grantham?}, to give an official hell when he screws up? I know respect for officials is one thing you try to teach players, but those guys have to know that somebody will go to the wall for them.
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That is the job of the HC and one of the biggest reasons I have become disillusioned with CMR.
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