This clip was the first thing I had to go hunting for this morning.
Yeah, that’s about what I thought. That’s badly blown enough, it might even get an acknowledgement from the SEC office.
In the vast scheme of things, it didn’t wind up biting Georgia in the ass, so that’s a relief. But it sucks when something that pretty gets taken away through no fault of your own.
Get The Picture 
The officiating is beyond ridicurus.
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How do you possibly throw a flag on that? Unless he’s clearly downfield and affecting the play itself, you just don’t do it. And as the commentators said, option teams do far worse than that stuff all the time and get away with it.
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Inexplicable.Richt is the anti-Hat. Can’t get his trickeration to work even when they do it exactly as drawn up.
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It’s past time for everyone involved with college football, including the media, to open their eyes to the ever-growing possibility of these part-time officials being bribed by either “super-fans” or gambling syndicates.
The under/over seemed curiously low going into this game and if you’d bet the under this is exactly the sort of call you’d want. Of course, I’m not saying anything like that happened here, but I think it illustrates how easy and effective such a thing could be.
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I have been entertaining similarly dark thoughts for a few years now. As example 1b. I will introduce the Alabama game: highly questionable reversal of the goalline fumble preceded on the prior possession by a Bama defender in the neutral zone that caused the MSU OLineman to flinch. The false start “penalty” pushed MSU from 2nd down at the 2yl to the 7 yl and ended with them settling for a FG.
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That reversal wasn’t highly questionable…it was the correct call. Henry was clearly in the end zone.
Regarding the false start penalty…they guy definitely jumped…I don’t remember anyone making a big deal of it at the time. Not sure I would base my case of throwing games on that call. 🙂
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BD, I don’t think many would argue that it looked like the call should have been a TD but that is not the issue here, the call on the field looked wrong from the various angles we saw. The question is when did the booth get the right to change a call when there was no indisputable evidence that it was a missed call? Correcting to what “seems like” has not been the standard and that seemed to be setting new precedent. I would bet with 90% certainty that having better camera angles would have allowed it to be overturned but as the announcers said, they never got that definitive shot to justify the change. We are in new territory if that becomes an option for the booth.
Agree about the false start, it wasn’t a jump but the OT did make a slight move and that usually gets called. Tide defense looks very solid, the offense is very Amari Cooper dependent…but then, how many teams can shut him down?
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Well…Since the call was ultimately correct, I guess I didn’t think much about the reasoning. The call on the field was a fumble and I think the reversal was justified, despite the bad angles (thanks, CBS).
If you want to argue bad calls, there were a couple in the LSU game – like the punt being downed near the goal – that definitely went our way.
I’m not part of the black helicopter crowd, though, I just think the officiating is lousy.
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Me either, not bringing this up for conspiracy reasons, just mentioning the danger of opening another can of worms with judgment in the booth. That was never meant to be used that way and I don’t know if we want to let that cat out of the bag.
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Matt Austin and crew seem to be wanting to pick up where Penn will be leaving off in screwing us when he retires!
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To be fair, they seemed to recognize their errors from there on out. We got several holding calls, which hasn’t happened all year it seems like.
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After our KO return got called back (on a legit call) and this happening, I thought we’d be in for a long night. Thankfully, I was wrong, and the officials actually decided to call holding a few times last night.
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I’d like to know exactly which official made that call. Anyone? Bueller?
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My guess is it was the umpire, in the middle, as he starts running toward a spot near the LOS at the end of the play.
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In which case, is it not then more difficult to gauge that the OLineman is 5 yards down the field??
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You’d think so.
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I understand bad no-calls, because it’s not like the refs can see everything. What I don’t and never will understand is how they can call penalties that so obviously didn’t even happen. It’s blatantly unacceptable and I sincerely hope the ref responsible faces significant financial and career repercussions from the league office (although we all know he won’t). You can’t just make shit up. #54 barely even went two yards.
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Can we ask for ACC refs for the Tech game? They have to be better than SEC refs.
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Don’t the refs come from the ACC since the game is at UGA?
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I’ve never seen a game with so many awesome plays that didn’t count.
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Horrendous call, but we all know nothing will happen because of it.
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You are right of course, but why/how can that be allowed to happen by any conference? This is not cry about missed calls, or ones that can be debated, the game moves at warp speed and you never what angle an official sees the action from, or what player may be blocking some of the action, we are talking invented calls that were invented by an official in an attempt to interject himself into the game. I would put the downfield line call last night in that category. Think about what had to go into pulling that flag since it took place in an isolated area, no other players around, and no impact on the play since it was 40+ yards away. He had to say to himself, there is a guy wandering around looking for some one to block but no one is available, I think I will pull my ticket book out and write him up, much like a guy sitting in his car in a mostly vacant parking lot minding his own business. It was worse than the no-holding call against us at SC that brought Gurley’s TD back against SC. Horrible, but not as bad, are the AJ celebration rule against LSU, and the non-targeting call against Drew at Vandy last year. Three of these four calls cost UGA wins directly, last night could have.
Shaw and Slive should have to answer for these and explain from the involved officials’ viewpoint. They either do not know the rules, or have something more evil going on. Either is grounds for dismissal and non-action from the supervisors is grounds for their departure. Again, we aren’t even addressing the bad calls and replay reviews that have plagued the conference for almost 20 years. (How about that overturn on the Bama “TD” yesterday? I think the play should have been called a TD on the field, but that was precedent setting to rule it a TD after it had been called a fumble on the field and there was no angle that conclusively showed otherwise. I know the “appearance” was a TD, but that isn’t the guidelines we have used in the past.) This will only get worse if allowed to continue.
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Good post. I’ve suggested elsewhere that refs’s finances should be checked on an ongoing basis.
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Shaw and Slive should have to answer for these and explain from the involved officials’ viewpoint. There is a certain Gruberesque quality about the attitude of those gentlemen. An arrogance mixed with a “you just can’t touch me so stfu.”
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That call was the equivalent of a drunk guy going outside to get something out of his car, and getting ticketed for a DUI.
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Excellent post Mac and I agree with you totally. Everybody who has a job is supposed to be held accountable for job performance–everybody, it seems, except SEC football officials apparently. Let’s give the officials the benefit of the doubt and just assume that when calls are blown it is just a mistake and not an attempt to influence the outcome of a game. How many mistakes are acceptable before a game official is declared incompetent and fired? At some point if the game official is making bad calls all the time the SEC needs to fire the guy and replace him with someone who is competent. Right now SEC football is a Billion Dollar industry with 25 cent officiating.
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One thing this team decided was if we have to brat the refs too we will. Glad they did not feel.sucker punched and keep playing even harder after those penalties.
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Beat not brat
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Beat on the Brat with a baseball bat? Oh yeah! Especially if it’s P.Wagers.
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Is there any logic as to why you can’t review penalties???
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Referee job protection.
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For reals. You’d think on calls like that someone from the booth would at least walkie-talkie down and be like “Dude, that’s stupid. Pick the flag up.”
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Is there a Zebra Union? That could be one explanation, of course maybe the SEC is their de facto union.
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Kublanow consciously stays within 3 yards of the los. He even appears to try to move laterally until the ball is well downfield. And he still gets flagged. Playing while Georgia. Come on man!
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Or PWG (Playing While Ginger) given that #54 has been the target of the 2 worst phantom calls vs us this season.
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I’m fairly certain I know what happened here.
Richt sent a bunch of film into the SEC office this week of Auburn linemen holding and being downfield on passes. This was obviously passed on to the crew.
That call was a clear “see, we’re more than happy to stringently enforce the illegal man downfield call” move on the part of the crew.
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He wasn’t against the rules at all though
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Kublanow received the “holding” call against the Yardbirds that called back Gurleys Touchdown. I wonder if the refs watch him most than others cause he’s very aggressive and will grind you in the ground. Two great plays called back on him.
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The game was still in question so the refs had to keep the dream Iron Bowl match up alive for ESPN.
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Alabama had knocked off Missy State…Prime Time Iron Bowl. Tickets go through the roof. Lot of money left of the table because of last night. Some unhappy folks. Refs won’t get that Thanksgiving Bonus. 😉
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I’ve always thought that conference crews should go away, too many agendas. Get a system more like basketball with regional crews that cross conferences. The one improvement in the last couple of years is the addition of a head official answering questions from the broadcast team. That guy sounded like he was probably UGA red with humiliation when asked about that call and he surely communicated it to the crew at halftime. Now we just need the officials to be required to hold a press conference after the game like the coaches and we might see real progress. But, really, right now, who gives a crap, that game was beautiful!
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Agree, officials should be independent of the conferences and calls should be standardized by one group of trainers. It did look like there was some “we will show you”, he just picked a bad situation because it was so obviously blown that it cannot be ignored. They should have red faces over that one.
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Either he cheated or he’s inept. Either is grounds to be fired. It’s wrong to steal weeks and maybe even years of practice and work from a player and team. Took that idiot three seconds to throw a flag on a play Georgia probably worked on for weeks…and executed it perfectly. What a completely stupid asshat.
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Is it just me or does the rules expert in the booth sound like he’s about to say, “Da Bearssss”? He does say, “da tree yardsss.”
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Pretty ironic that this call goes against an Auburn opponent. The crew probably didn’t even know it was in the rule book until your coaches told them before the game.
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These crappy phantom penalties get called, are clearly wrong, and there is just accountability at all! Nobody gets fired, demoted or gets his pay docked. We have the best football and the worst refs.
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Worst call in decades. Just pathetic, stupid, incompetence. The head official should have called the guy who called it over and said, “Are you elfin kidding me? that is not a penalty. Idiot. And I will not have my crew reviewed and criticized for that.”
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