chally

October 21st, 2009 at 7:28 PM ^

The officiating really was terrible. It's like they handed the game to Florida. I usually hate complaints about the refs "giving away" games, as they're often whiny conspiracy theory things, but the calls in that game really were atrocious.

Blazefire

October 22nd, 2009 at 7:51 AM ^

It's not "like they did". They did. The SEC will do anything it takes to stay in the lead for the MNC, including throw its other teams under the bus wherever possible for their golden boys.

Conspiracy? Well, you check some of the calls gone in Florida's favor this year and then you let me know.

Captain

October 21st, 2009 at 7:32 PM ^

that somewhere a bubbling Charley Weis is screaming at his desk, spewing Cheetos and racks of lamb all over his paperwork* and his pre-Thanksgiving Thanksgiving dinner, as he contemplates why the Big Ten officiating crews still have jobs.

*Charcoal sketches of Jimmy Clausen

BlockM

October 21st, 2009 at 8:16 PM ^

This is both good and bad.

Good: It shows that the conference is serious about making sure the referees are high quality.

Bad: After every single game idiot fans are going to be called for the refs to be fired based on a bad call or two.

Overall the good outweighs the bad though. Hopefully more conferences will take this route, but only after a ref has demonstrated that they are consistently making incorrect calls.

phjhu89

October 21st, 2009 at 8:24 PM ^

I guess not, considering the umpire union's collective bargaining agreement.

I'm a Yankee fan, but last night's circus act by McClelland was truly appalling. Thankfully it did not have the same effect ALCS game 4 as the Alabama-Florida fiasco, but still...

noshesnot

October 21st, 2009 at 8:31 PM ^

These were the same refs to screw up a game earlier in the year in the SEC, too. This wasn't a one-time/one-game thing. It was repetitive mistakes that influenced the outcome of close games.

Robbie Moore

October 21st, 2009 at 8:43 PM ^

Either these guys can ref to collegiate standards or they can not. Either back them up or fire them. I sure wouldn't want them refereeing my game the first week back off suspension. They'll be afraid of their own shadow.

ajscipione

October 21st, 2009 at 10:23 PM ^

The refs handed that game to Florida on a silver platter on the last drive of the game. It was aa pathetic a display of refereeing as I've seen this year, although I must admit it seems to be more widespread than just the SEC.

Tim Waymen

October 21st, 2009 at 11:30 PM ^

It's too late. Florida is still undefeated. Fuck the SEC. Fuck em, fuck em fuck em. It's just a dirty, dirty conference. Florida might not be as complete a team as everyone thought and Cincinnati and possibly 1-loss USC are national contenders, damn straight someone's going to make sure things go a certain way. What else to expect from a conference in which every school other than Vandy has been punished for NCAA rule infractions in the past 2 decades?

Arkansas fans are fooling themselves if they believe that the bad calls are not the reason they lost. The truth is, had the right calls been made, then there really might have been a different outcome. That bullshit officiating influenced the outcome and made the upset less likely. This should be an outrage to any fan of college football.

Tater

October 22nd, 2009 at 7:31 AM ^

Most refs are part-timers with desk jobs during the week, who then get their plane ticket and fly to wherever the game is. Maybe full-time refs are in order. Of course, it didn't do a lot of good in baseball.

I think the games have become too fast, and that refs should use technology to help them out. I really wish that penalties were reviewable, though. To me, penalties are the best tool refs have for manipulating the outcome of games. I'm not saying they do all the time, but that refs are human, and therefore subject to biases, "bad days," and even gambling debts that can be easily paid off with a "favor."

The first time FSU played UM (UM won), it was a split crew. The southern refs called penalties on UM three straight plays, and then the Big Ten refs called penalties on FSU three straight plays. They finally had a conference and the rest of the game seemed to be called fairly. I am relying on memory for this, but it is roughly what happened, at least to these eyes.

Anyway, my point is that refs do affect the outcome of games. Sometimes they do it on purpose, and sometimes they don't. It puts players, coaches, and fans in a bad position, because if they simply acknowlege the fact that the refs influenced the games, it is seen as "whining" by most of the sports world.

To me, the solution is to make sure the refs are competent, and then have a fail-safe system to not only keep rogues from hijacking the games for whatever reasons they may have, but also to rectify honest mistakes. I can see this happening around 2050 or so.

TomW09

October 22nd, 2009 at 9:09 AM ^

"Anyway, my point is that refs do affect the outcome of games. Sometimes they do it on purpose, and sometimes they don't."

Please. Stop. Refs do not affect the game on purpose. That's ludicrous. Yes, there's the basketball betting ref. A statistic anomoly. Most people have no idea how much officials work to get to the D1 level. No idea.

These aren't people that are looking to get famous or are looking to steal a show. They are people doing one of the most difficult jobs in the world. A job in which mistakes are ridiculously easy to make, yet they make very few.

And people also have no idea how seriously conferences evaluate their officials. Once in a blue moon a conference will release a story like this and everyone will be like "finally they do something about those terrible refs". The reality is that most times a conference will simply not invite a crew back after they have been determined inadequate. There's no fanfare, no press release. You just get a different crew next year.

I've been lucky enough to be at a couple high level officiating conferences and have heard the director of basketball officials of the ACC speak. In that conference, every single call and non-call are video reviewed. The ACC holds its officials to a 90% correctness rate. That's ridiculous. In the final two minutes of the game they are expected to be perfect. And these are all reviewed several times, in slow motion if necessary. And the refs are expected to get it correct live, during the game 90% of the time, 100% of the time in the final two minutes.

Trust me, conferences at the D1 and professional level take officials training and evaluation far more seriously than most people realize.

TomW09

October 22nd, 2009 at 9:25 AM ^

Officials at this level make plenty, plenty of money. Basketball B10 officials make $2000 a game. That's their compensation, not considering the free air fare and hotel.

I may be biased, but I'd much rather be making $150,000 a year officiating games to the best of my ability than throwing a call for some bookie, especially when I know at that level that every single call I make is heavily scrutinized, and every single dollar I spend is heavily scrutinized.

The point is, let's not act like all, or many, or even some officials are dirty. The fact is that some ridiculous percentage, like 99.9999999% are not. There's random, isolated cases that come up once in a great while. And honostly, that's a completely different story.