John O'Neil should be banned from officiating B1G games
Re: The John O'Neill crew. This isn't a one-game issue. This isn't a three-game issue. This is years of consistent, game-defining malpractice. This isn't just bad calls; their inability to manage personal fouls is the reason these games get out of control and players get hurt.
— Seth M. Fisher (@Misopogon) November 18, 2018
Off the top of my head
— Seth M. Fisher (@Misopogon) November 18, 2018
2018 IU
2018 Nebraska
2017 MSU
2016 Iowa
2016 Oregon State
2016 UCF
2014 IU, ND and OSU
2013 Nebraksa
2012 OSU, Illinois
2011 Illinois
And that infamous 2014 OSU-PSU game
November 19th, 2018 at 1:00 PM ^
I think that game is way overblown in the fanbase and amplified because it was The Game, our recent history with OSU and the feeling that we finally had a good enough team to compete. I watched that video someone posted about the no live ball fouls and I saw 3 legitimate bad missed calls (the late hit and a couple of PI/Defensive holding) and the rest were pretty boarder line. You can argue the spot all you want but there was no definitive angle and IMO the offense gets the benefit of the doubt in most cases of spotting the ball. 2015 MSU by far the worst game I've seen from officials in a Michigan game and was orders of magnitude worse than 2016 OSU.
November 19th, 2018 at 11:17 AM ^
I think big ten officials as a whole are incompetent but O'Neill is the absolute worst.
November 19th, 2018 at 11:20 AM ^
The NCAA needs to hire full-time referees who get paid only to ref D1 NCAAFB games. The refs need to be drawn from the entire country, the crews need to be composed of people from dissimilar places, and the crews need to be randomly mixed frequently.
During the offseason, the refs can do rules training and "virtual reffing" of games that have occurred in the recent past - all being graded. Poor performers need to get fired.
NCAAFB is a money generating machine. If position coaches can be paid hundreds of thousands of dollars, a ref can be paid $200k a year so they can focus on their craft.
November 19th, 2018 at 11:40 AM ^
Wait a minute though - that makes too much sense. The NCAA never has been about doing anything logical or the right way.
November 19th, 2018 at 11:48 AM ^
I don't even think they'd need to pay them anywhere near $200K. I think you could pay them something comparable to what most state court judges or other high-level public servants make and that would easily be enough--and that's just for the actual referee; the other crew members could be paid less than that DOE. I'm sure there are plenty of people who would sign up to be a field judge or an umpire for $50K or $70K a year, maybe even less.
November 19th, 2018 at 12:17 PM ^
interesting thought. According to this:
https://www.celebritynetworth.com/articles/how-much-does/nfl-referee-sa…
NFL refs start at around $75k and go up to $200k. However, they aren't full-time employees (no time off, health insurance, etc.). Baseball umpires do get all those benefits and can make up to $400k a year.
November 19th, 2018 at 12:15 PM ^
While I don't disagree with the general sentiment, I don't think that randomly mixing crews frequently is optimal. The fact of the matter is that being an official is hard. Each member of the crew has certain responsibilities and they have to be able to work together. The referee as crew chief has to be able to know the strengths and weaknesses of each.
November 19th, 2018 at 12:20 PM ^
I'm an academic by profession. The research on group performance as a function of group stability is mixed. One of the highest performing medical systems in the world randomly mixes their surgical support teams weekly.
In this instance, I think any loss of performance would be offset by the increased probability of an honest ref catching/reporting a crooked one.
Plus, if you standardize and increase the training and kick out the shitty performers, you decrease person to person variance.
November 19th, 2018 at 11:21 AM ^
I don't even know how to look it up, if it's possible. I'd love to see the underdog record vs the spread in his games.
Every game he refs seems to be closer than it should be.
November 19th, 2018 at 11:30 AM ^
You are spot on.
Underdogs have covered 60 percent of the 113 games he has officiated ever since the twitter feed @CFBRefStats has started tracking. By far the best ref for underdogs in the NCAA, according to them.
November 19th, 2018 at 11:38 AM ^
That's...fuck that guy.
November 19th, 2018 at 11:50 AM ^
Nice find Alton - thanks; interesting.
November 19th, 2018 at 11:59 AM ^
Sample size over 100 and consistently higher % of questionable outcomes?
Sounds like he's taking gambling money. Need the fbi to sieze his phone and check those btc transactions.
November 19th, 2018 at 12:10 PM ^
I doubt he's taking bribes. He's just Chaotic Evil.
November 19th, 2018 at 12:18 PM ^
Chaotic Evil would take the bribe then kill the person who bribed them. Wouldn't put that past O'Neill.
November 19th, 2018 at 12:30 PM ^
More like Chaotic Incompetent. Obviously he has no regard for the integrity of the game, but if he was taking dirty money I think he'd be forced to be more brazen. Also, he doesn't always seem necessarily biased; a lot of his calls are just inexplicable trash. For example, ejecting Joe Bolden. . . that shell-shocked the defense and MSU took advantage, but FWIW he was one of the worst players on that defense.
He could be placing bets himself, though. If he was managing his own risks he wouldn't necessarily need to panic if a team outperformed his expectations.
November 19th, 2018 at 12:45 PM ^
Yeah, he's basic rules Chaotic with low WIS.
November 19th, 2018 at 12:57 PM ^
There ya go.
November 19th, 2018 at 12:33 PM ^
Alton: You are a wealth of extremely useful information!
November 19th, 2018 at 12:36 PM ^
Yup, the moment I saw the title of this thread, it rang in my head. "Follow the Money"
November 19th, 2018 at 12:48 PM ^
I think that's lower than I assumed, but I'm sure he's doing a bunch of nondescript games.
I'm not sure he's on the take. . Maybe more susceptible to reffing the score, or worse the league trying to make the games closer for tv/ratings purposes in prime time games
November 19th, 2018 at 11:23 AM ^
When is the crew for The Game announced?
November 19th, 2018 at 11:23 AM ^
Water is wet. More news at 11.
November 19th, 2018 at 11:23 AM ^
Any word on who’s officiating Saturday?
November 19th, 2018 at 11:32 AM ^
Probably the Capron crew, but obviously they won't announce that until Friday afternoon at the earliest. Very unlikely to be O'Neil; Big Ten referees almost never get assigned to the same team two weeks in a row. Hasn't happened in 3 years as far as I can see.
November 19th, 2018 at 11:37 AM ^
Isn't it a two week window to avoid repeats, not one? Capron did the Rutgers game so that might rule him out.
Edit: Snodgrass did the Wisconsin and Illinois games in 2016 but that involved a bye week so I'm not sure how that impacts things.
November 19th, 2018 at 11:51 AM ^
I hope so. After 2016 I'd actually take O'Neill's incompetence over Capron's bias in a heartbeat.
November 19th, 2018 at 11:51 AM ^
I guess I don't even know if this is a rule or just a general guideline. I track the refs for all Big Ten games, but I only looked back over the last few years to see if there were any back-to-back appearances. There weren't.
November 19th, 2018 at 12:03 PM ^
I'd bet it's a general guideline as opposed to an actual rule. LeMonnier actually did back to back games in 2012 against Notre Dame and Purdue, but that also involved a bye week.
Also just remembered it was the O'Neill crew that was responsible for the Nebraska-Michigan State "receiver forced out of bounds" game in 2015, so we can add that to the list of officiating atrocities.
November 19th, 2018 at 1:05 PM ^
The Detroit News interviewed the head of Big Ten officiating in 2015 and he said that they try to space assignments out over 4 weeks. So ideally they don't want a ref paired up with the same team until after 4 weeks.
November 19th, 2018 at 12:11 PM ^
I think Capron is a possibility, but he worked The Game the last time it was in Columbus so I don't think it is going to happen twice in a row especially with how much publicity the officiating got in The Game in 2016. I think O'Neill and Kluczynski are out because they did the Michigan and OSU games last week respectively. Ron Snodgrass did The Game last year so I doubt he does it two years in a row. My guess is it is going to be Mike Cannon or Jerry McGinn.
November 19th, 2018 at 12:25 PM ^
Kluczynski would have been highly unlikely anyways because he was responsible for the Northwestern phantom hold game this year. I'd add Jeff Servinski to the list of possibilities; he did the Penn State game this year and outside of one botched PI call I can't remember anything too egregious about his crew.
November 19th, 2018 at 12:38 PM ^
I wouldn't mind McGinn. Off the top of my head I can't recall an instance where I was incensed at something his crew called.
November 19th, 2018 at 12:46 PM ^
It's crazy that we have to have a conversation about the officiating crew for The Game merely hoping for impartiality, but here we are.
November 19th, 2018 at 12:17 PM ^
We can't get Capron again after what happened in 2016, can we?
November 19th, 2018 at 11:24 AM ^
They really should double the ref's salaries and make it a full time position. It has to be hard to find qualified people willing to work part time.
That said, my conclusion is that the Big 10 just doesn't give a fuck about having competent officials. Because it's not just Michigan that gets screwed on a regular basis by O'Neill crew (among others).
I think it would take the coaches and AD's to make a public stand for anything to change.
November 19th, 2018 at 11:46 AM ^
I googled John Oneil and found out that his actual job is a senior sales representative for some company called The Stone Group. He is probably a shitty sales rep too.
November 19th, 2018 at 11:25 AM ^
I'm having a hard time remembering anything terrible happening in the 2017 MSU game. Or the 2016 UCF game. Michigan didn't play Oregon State in 2016 either.
The 2014 and earlier ones I'm also having trouble remembering anything stupid happening in regards to officiating.
Care to help a guy out?
November 19th, 2018 at 11:34 AM ^
These are only games that John O'Neil and crew officiated...
November 19th, 2018 at 11:51 AM ^
Right, but in the context of the tweet, Seth was asked "what are some examples of games that Michigan has been apart of with O'Neill's crew"?
So what I'm asking is in that list of games, where there other instances of stupidity that I'm forgetting? Or was it just 2018 Indiana, 2018 Nebraska, and a few others?
November 19th, 2018 at 12:41 PM ^
Pretty sure that Seth meant he 2015 Oregon State game. That was the game where Michigan wa called for roughing the kicker when the OSU punter had rolled out after bobbling the snap and had become a runner before then punting. You can't rough a runner...because he's a runner!
That call resulted in (I believe) the first sideline meltdown of the Harbaugh era.
November 19th, 2018 at 11:32 AM ^
Accountability would be nice instead of the big ten just saying "Yeah that was a bad call, sorry".
November 19th, 2018 at 11:40 AM ^
Bashing a ref on a blog is not good! We don't want to get into any refs bad side for obvious reasons.
November 19th, 2018 at 11:52 AM ^
Insert McEnroe - "You can not be serious!?"
November 19th, 2018 at 12:01 PM ^
A guy with a track record of throwing dozens of games is not going to stop if you ignore him.
It must be brought to light if you want change, and that probably means doing more than telling Delaney.
November 19th, 2018 at 11:55 AM ^
As long as Comedian/Masturbator Jim Delaney is BIG commish, nothing whatsoever will happen. If anything, he will ensure that this guy works the OSU game.
November 19th, 2018 at 11:58 AM ^
Seth left off the canonical example, 2015 vs MSU
November 19th, 2018 at 12:01 PM ^
After the game my first thought was how little interest I would ever have again in watching that game again. It was just excruciating and took 4 hours. Flags, injuries, cramps, QB escapes, converted IU 3rd downs, just painful, but nowhere near as painful as watching Maryland miss a wide open pass to a guy 7 yards away to beat OSU...About as tough a weekend as I can imagine where we actually won.
November 19th, 2018 at 12:01 PM ^
John O'Neill is the only college ref whose name I know. Most refs aren't consistently bad enough to be memorable. He and his crew are simply the worst.
Either fire him or make him only officiate Rutger games.
November 19th, 2018 at 12:27 PM ^
The only way to become famous as an air traffic controller is to crash a bunch of planes.
The highest honor of a referee is anonymity. Yet I am all too familiar with the name O'Neill.