Maybe the stupidest officiating call of the postseason was the decision to eject Kentucky running back Benny Snell during the Music City Bowl. Given the nature of the world we live in, that’s led to the next level of stupidity, threats made against the Pac-12 official who threw out Snell.
Almost as stupid, though, is the finger pointing and shrugging off going on in the wake of all this by the Pac-12 and the SEC.
The harassing calls began to die down until last week, sources said, when a letter from Kentucky athletic director Mitch Barnhart to the Pac-12’s vice president of officials, David Coleman, critical of Coyte and his crew was made public by the Lexington Herald-Leader, which reported it obtained the letter through an open records request.
When contacted by ESPN for comment regarding Barnhart’s letter, the Pac-12 made it clear it felt his decision to reach out directly to Coleman was a break from protocol.
“We’re happy to discuss the matter with the SEC,” the Pac-12 said in a statement. “We’re particularly sensitive about this issue because our officials have received threats and we are concerned about their safety.”
In separate statements to ESPN, Kentucky and the SEC both expressed a similar belief that there is not an outlined protocol for how to elevate these concerns.
“We are not aware of any protocols for this kind of situation,” the Kentucky athletic department said in its statement. “We made contact with the Southeastern Conference office and made them aware of our concerns. We expressed those concerns to the SEC and to the Pac-12 office.”
Added the SEC: “The University of Kentucky expressed its concerns about specific instances related to officiating in the Music City Bowl to both the SEC and the Pac-12 offices. There has been no universal protocol related to communicating concerns about post-season bowl games. The SEC has no further comment on this matter.”
“There has been no universal protocol related to communicating concerns about post-season bowl games.” Well, whose fault is that, genius?
There is an obvious solution to an obvious problem — nationalize officiating, standardize training and inject some real accountability into job performance. This isn’t rocket science. It just takes some effort and resources coupled with a sincere commitment to improve the work on the field. Um… well, for college football, maybe that is rocket science.
Get The Picture 
I’m not sure your solutions are an answer if you watched the NFL this year. As bad as some of the officiating was in college, the NFL was laughable….with all the nationalization and standardization in the world. I’m not sure what’s going on with officiating in football. The only thing I can figure is that we fans notice these shortcomings more with the exponential increase in coverage, innumerable camera angles, zoomed- in HD slo-mo, and DVR rewind-equipped 60 inch UHD TV’s in nearly every household. This is a real problem, though. I just can’t think of a solution that would actually work. The NFL’s solution has been to stop after virtually every pass play, and discuss it for 5 minutes, literally making the game unwatchable. In addition, no one knows what a catch is anymore.
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You are right that it will not solve all the issues, but you have to know if would be better if you standardized the ways plays are called/seen. And not having refs from the same region, where there are biases around them 24/7, 365, (in the South for sure) regardless of where they went to school would be good. Ergo, how good did you feel about the blown Jasper Sanks fumble knowing Ford and his crew were reporting to two Techies in the conference office? And how in the hell did two Nerds ever get hired in the SEC office to administrate anything doing with football?
Also, a strong point for having a National Group not tied directly to any conference, means not having the crew’s Supervisor with a financial interest in the result of the game. That would be much more comforting on close calls where major bowl money is at stake, the conference gets a slice you know.
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Full time jobs with full time pay and full time accountability. Belly up with the money! If this were in place we might be talking about repeating our national champ run. A novel idea. No way the swinging di__s choose to spend the money. Alas.
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I’d just like to take this opportunity to complain yet again about the officiating in the Nat’l Champ Beauty Contest. It was really, really bad especially in the second half.
And kudos Senator for getting after it today despite the weather! Haha…
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It’s not like I’ve got anything better to do right now. 😉
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Senator, has there been similar blowback about the Big 10 officiating crew in the National Championship Game? There certainly should be IMHO.
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Senator, has there been similar blowback about the Big 10 officiating crew in the National Championship Game? There certainly should be IMHO.
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College football is pretty much in the business of printing money these days. Schools and conferences literally cannot spend it fast enough. It’s time to pay for full time officials. Even if we don’t do it on a national level, certainly each conference ought to be able to pay and train officiating crews at the conference level. Just doing something, anything, would almost have to be an improvement.
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The officiating has gotten to the point where it’s laughable. I understand there are snap judgments to be made, but the inability to make the most basic of calls (offsides, false starts, face mask, unnecessary roughness, holding) is making people ask hard questions about game fixing.
In the NFL, this issue of what is a catch is ridiculous. At both levels, instant replay is starting to harm the game rather than enhance it. Use it to correct egregious mistakes caused by the speed of the game.
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“…the inability to make the most basic calls…is making people ask hard questions about game fixing.” That statement seems to assume that game fixing is not going on. I am convinced it IS going on and has been going on for years. What we need is an investigation to be made into this by a governmental agency with subpoena power. Then, and only then, will we be able to get to the bottom of this. College football is a BILLION dollar industry. Millions of dollars are wagered some legally some illegally on a weekly basis. Do you not think that professionals (read:the Mob) would like to be placing huge bets knowing the outcomes of games in advance? Either games are being fixed or they aren’t. Right now we don’t really know and we won’t until an investigation finds out one way or the other.
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I don’t know whether games are being fixed. If I did, I would probably be wearing cement boots at the bottom of the Chattahoochee right now.
Would I be surprised if it were happening? No.
The problem is only the state of Nevada could investigate as the only state currently (I think) to legalize sports betting beyond horse and dog racing. I don’t believe the Feds could investigate unless there were concerns about wire/mail fraud … even then I would believe it would be a stretch. No way does the Nevada Gaming Commission or the state Attorney General touch that investigation with a 10 foot pole.
Just my $.02.
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Who investigated that NBA ref and sent him to jail a few years ago? The Feds. Those guys had the jurisdiction.
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They could but would need a smoking gun like they got with Tim Donaghy (sp). Somehow they figured out he was betting on games he officiated and had organized crime ties. It was a criminal indictment against him. As I say, the only way they could do it now would be to investigate based on wire fraud in particular.
I’m not a lawyer, but I did stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night.
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https://mobile.nytimes.com/2007/08/16/sports/basketball/16nba.html?referer=https://www.google.com/
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Instant replay has been a major factor in the decline officiating. In college ball as well as the NFL. I know it will not happen, now that the barn door is open, but it would not bother me to do away with instant replay and make the officials truly accountable.
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How do you plan on making officials truly accountable by eliminating replay? Hell, we got them on video now blowing the calls and nobody does anything.
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Fans can threaten officials?? And here I was thinking there was some kind of gentlemen’s agreement of fairness. Now I know why bama fans were so confident going in, and ended up getting the calls in crunch time….
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The guy working the Alabama sideline needs a visit:
Probably an even nicer car waiting….
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I can watch Lebowski clips all day.
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Since players’ compensation is capped, increases in college revenues can either go to increased pay for Greg McGarity types or to paying for quality officiating. Easy call for me.
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It’s an easy call for Greg and his pals too. 😉
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Yeah, and Greg and his pals are the ones making the decision. 😉
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You can train these guys and gals from now until the cows come home, but they still aren’t going to see everything going on while 22 guys are mauling each other in a bar fight. And by the way, Georgia stepped out of bounds on the long TD, so quit crying Dawgs- it’s embarrassing.
But accountability, I like that idea. How hard would it be for the PAC 12 to say that while referees can’t be touched to dispute a call, it regrets that Snell was ejected.
I saw TV Ted calling a basketball game last night. I guess he’s not accountable.
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No, Hardman didn’t step out, or at least it’s not clear that he did, which is why they didn’t overturn it. Be embarrassed all you want, but the officials played a key role in Georgia losing.
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Hardman did not step out. What game were you watching?
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He did NOT step out. And please don’t try to justify one review event vs. at the least 5 flagrant officiating whiffs.
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Hardman did NOT step out of bounds on that play. You’re the only person whining here.
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While you may be right that we wouldn’t have lost because of the officials if UGA hadn’t choked the way we played the 2nd half offensively (actually we played offense defensively which was a disaster), but because WE let it get close, the officials did a chance to change the outcome with their ineptness. You apparently didn’t watch the game closely, or look at the replay, but there is no doubt on non-subjective, not in doubt calls, UGA took it in the cod sack. Of the three most significant calls they blew, two of them likely changed the outcome by somewhere near a 90% certainty, the other one could have chanced the outcome but was closer to 50/50 that it would have.
And the call you actually brought up was going which ever way it was called on the field because there is no decisive way to determine if Hardman was in or out of bounds. It was a tie and neither team could have a beef with it, just a matter of opinion. I would have been OK with him being called out and it being upheld on review because there is no right or wrong, just something you wish for. A definite split the baby case where even super slow mo, or HD cannot help. I do wonder how you can reach a definitive opinion on that call, based on what exactly?
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The NCAA doesn’t have the funding to nationalize referee crews 😐….said no one with common sense!
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Maybe if the refs wore green striped uniforms the NCAA would pay attention to them.
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Don’t all the Pro leagues except the NFL have full time refs? The NFL uses the college model and lets their refs moonlight from their real jobs on the weekend. Both the NFL and the NCAA take pride in protecting their guys right or wrong. The discipline, if any, should be made public to at least let the public know something was done. One of the big problems is you have out of shape middle aged men trying to control a game being played faster than ever before. I’m 70 and I swear some of the officials look my age.
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This is what I’ve been ranting about. Elite athletes and coaches pushing the envelope by stretching every inch of turf as fast as possible, and, coaching players up to and beyond some rules can not be officiated by a mediocre referee. They just aren’t good enough.
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When does McG’s letter to the B10 hit the mail?
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He’ll tell us in 90 days and then will say we’re only looking forward. In other words, he’s too lazy to do it.
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I know I should be an adult and move on. However, in the darkest corners of my mind, I still want to go all Game of Thrones on those refs. Yes, there would be dragons involved.
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Another thing that blows my mind is how every game doesn’t have dual cameras stationed on each goal line. Even the Tuesday night MACtion games have eleventeen cameras showing every bit of action, but whether or not a ball crossed the goal, all you get is one shot at a weird angle.
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Amen on the effort to bring more consistency, raise the floor, and bring some transparency on college officiating. Amen.
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