Big 12 Refs Atrocious

On OU's final TD the receiver was grabbing the DB's shoulder pads with his fingers over the top of the collar inside his shirt in order to hold him away. The ball was thrown there...what on earth were the officials looking at! I understand missing a call if its away from the play, but when it happens at the ball, I just don't get it. Our third down play earlier in the 4th our receiver was being hugged with 2 arms way before the ball arrived, again at the ball it can't be missed.

On our INT they call facemask on Boyd 30 yards away from the play. Yeah it was legit, but we can't get obvious ones actually at the ball?

The KR for a TD hold call. I can see 4 holds worse than that on every play.

I stopped watching NBA 10+ years ago because an enormous part of the game is about drawing the foul calls. I'm afraid football is largely about holding as much as possible and getting away with it. I'm not sure how many more games like this I can watch.
 
FWHORN said:
The officiating today was a joke but Texas did itself no favors either. Let’s not get too aggy when it comes to moaning about the refs.
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I don’t disagree with this; however, I would note that this post and many of the concerns / criticisms with the refs were expressed before the conclusion was known. In the beginning, I didn’t want this to be a cause and effect thing, only an objective statement about the lack of quality of Big 13 officiating. As the game progressed, however, it got worse. Still, at the end of the day you are right we had opportunities to win. You can make the same point about Okie State. But in both games the refs made atrocious calls on key plays that unquestionably affected points on the board. We had calls on 13 different plays. Whether that effect equates to changing the outcome, I don’t know. I do think it is fair to say that this crew did a poor job.
 
Horn2RunAgain said:
I agree with the above, I think the refs want a b12 team in the cfp.
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When the officiating is this bad, people start to wonder...

The refs were terrible today, but I've seen that happen in games that I don't care about, too. Unfortunately, humans becoming more stupid in general. At this point, it's apparently too much for a referee to see a guy getting taken down by the neck on a block or another player mugging a receiver without looking for the the ball.

Some people are scared of artificial intelligence, but I'm looking forward to embracing our AI cyborg overlords!
 
MUCHO said:
I don’t disagree with this; however, I would note that this post and many of the concerns / criticisms with the refs were expressed before the conclusion was known. In the beginning, I didn’t want this to be a cause and effect thing, only an objective statement about the lack of quality of Big 13 officiating. As the game progressed, however, it got worse. Still, at the end of the day you are right we had opportunities to win. You can make the same point about Okie State. But in both games the refs made atrocious calls on key plays that unquestionably affected points on the board. We had calls on 13 different plays. Whether that effect equates to changing the outcome, I don’t know. I do think it is fair to say that this crew did a poor job.
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right!
 
I would think all conference championship games would be called in favor of the higher ranked team, ESPECIALLY if they were the head and shoulders best chance for highest representation. PAC 12 is so bad, no need for bad officiating tonight because no playoff ramifications. Don’t mean to sound too conspiracy theory but need the big 12 to look good....I guess at our expense, but you need to play well enough to overcome those calls....
 
MUCHO said:
its unfortunate that this crew is the best the big 12 has to offer
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A couple of errors in your post. First of all, this crew was not the best, but is indeed the worst crew the Big XII has. Reggie Smith is a Philadelphia reject, who isn't allowed to do Pennsylvania HS playoff games. He is a BigSky official, who got dumped on us by Walt Anderson along with Walleye Burks, Dan Romero, et al. Yes, the same Walleye Burks who is now head of Big XII officials thanks to Bowlesby's continued attempts to prove just how clueless he is.

Where was Mike Defee, our only good referee?

Donnie Duncan hired Anderson. We all know who he was and what he was. I told Deloss when he allowed him to be hired that he would embarrass the conference and embarrass Deloss.

I hope that CdC gets settled in and takes control of Las Colinas. Until Chris does, "gross negligence" is alive and well up there, and I suspect that's the tip of the iceberg.

Feel free to email Bowelsby & Walleye with you "suggestions"

:hookem2:
 
SabreHorn said:
First of all, this crew was not the best, but is indeed the worst crew the Big XII has.
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My understanding is that this was the highest rated big 12 crew. Is that not right? (Oddly, I might feel better if it wasn’t and the crew for this game was just randomly assigned.)
 
Hoop said:
Some people are scared of artificial intelligence, but I'm looking forward to embracing our AI cyborg overlords!
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Like behind the plate in MLB. It astounds me we still have someone missing so many simple balls and strikes when we have the technology to fix that. If we want umps behind the plate then put small led light inside the umps mask and let him make the call based off green or red.
 
Not the first game that a Reggie Smith-led crew has screwed the Horns. I wasn't too worried about the game until they showed who was officiating. Then sure enough....
 
Apparently OU had to be coached up to play that way. Seeing how bad their defense had been playing, the players were just hanging on for dear life on every play, putting the onus on the silly refs to have to call something on almost every play. That just wasn’t going to happen.
 
Vol Horn 4 Life said:
There's a difference between being aggy and being right.
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Whole bunch of truth in that...

I think it goes too far to start assuming that the refs as a group are trying to move an outcome in one direction or the other. I think officials likely get caught up in the human element of things and once they see a team doing something, they start fixing in on it.

It's certainly bad officiating and it needs to be addressed. I suspect one of the reasons that Texas hasn't pushed this more is that you've seen how people have freaked out over the "Horns Down" thing. I don't even think we initiated that discussion (or maybe we did), but immediately the narrative is cry-baby, can't take it, just suck it up. So when you go to the conference office demanding that they make changes in our officiating, that's how it's perceived.

Anyway, officials clearly played a role in the outcome one way or another. It is what it is.
 
It's certainly bad officiating and it needs to be addressed. I suspect one of the reasons that Texas hasn't pushed this more is that you've seen how people have freaked out over the "Horns Down" thing. I don't even think we initiated that discussion (or maybe we did), but immediately the narrative is cry-baby, can't take it, just suck it up. So when you go to the conference office demanding that they make changes in our officiating, that's how it's perceived.
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We have not run the Big 12 and OU wins all the titles, yet everyone still claims we run the Big 12 and get all the breaks. We had three consecutive 7 loss seasons, have only finished ranked one time since 2010, have 3 Big 12 titles ever and lost to Kansas, yet everyone still claims we run the Big 12 and fix everything.

Guess what? If we went 0-12, everyone could still cry and claim we fix everything.

We need to just ignore the cries and do what is best for us. Appeasement gets us nowhere as we are surrounded by rivals that hate us (OU, A&M, Arkansas, Tech, Nebraska even Baylor) and are going to cry foul regardless of what happens. We have national recruiting battles with Notre Dame, Alabama, Georgia, Ohio State, Michigan, etc and they are going to cry foul to try and keep us down as well. Us trying to appease their cries and us getting screwed is what they want. UT's leadership needs to accept that and stop giving in.
 
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I think the refs were an embarrassment to the Big 12 yesterday. Maybe we still lose but there were literally bs calls on Texas that three plays later weren't called on blow u. Calling the truth crybaby does not change the truth. A reasonable person could surmise (sitting in Ohio) that the Big 12 gamed them with the refs.
 
To me the obvious answer is that the NCAA should hire refs rather than the conferences and account for regional prejudices. Every year the worst performing refs are let go, period.
 
A reasonable person could surmise (sitting in Ohio) that the Big 12 gamed them with the refs
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Judging by the national reaction, most fans who did not care either way did seem to feel we got hosed.
 
I think it is time to make everything reviewable. There would have to be a different standard, such as:
  • Level One Reviews, similar to the what we have now. Reversal occurs if there is indisputable evidence that the call was objectively wrong.
  • Level Two Reviews, for everything else. Reversal occurs only if it the available evidence leaves a firm impression that the call was both wrong and blatantly unfair. So, for example, you can’t get a holding penalty added just because a hold occurred. The replay guy would intervene only if he says “damn, they missed an obvious one there”. Same with pass interference, face mask, unsportsmanlike conduct, illegal formation, etc.
 
Longbomb said:
On OU's final TD the receiver was grabbing the DB's shoulder pads with his fingers over the top of the collar inside his shirt in order to hold him away. The ball was thrown there...what on earth were the officials looking at! I understand missing a call if its away from the play, but when it happens at the ball, I just don't get it. Our third down play earlier in the 4th our receiver was being hugged with 2 arms way before the ball arrived, again at the ball it can't be missed.

On our INT they call facemask on Boyd 30 yards away from the play. Yeah it was legit, but we can't get obvious ones actually at the ball?

The KR for a TD hold call. I can see 4 holds worse than that on every play.

I stopped watching NBA 10+ years ago because an enormous part of the game is about drawing the foul calls. I'm afraid football is largely about holding as much as possible and getting away with it. I'm not sure how many more games like this I can watch.
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It’s not credible that the line judge missed pre-snap, i.e., still action, infractions on two of OU’s bigger TDs. Those really shouldn’t be hard to see.
 
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Reggie Smith was most likely the "top ranked" by the Walleye Burks committee of ONE!

This is because Walleye is a BigSky official brought over by Walt Anderson to officiate Big XII games. When Anderson "stepped down", the outstanding Bowelsby committee of ONE recommended to Bowelsby that he hire Walleye for the position.

Reggie Smith is Walleye's "buddy" from the BigSky, and is being promoted as "the best". No coach in the Big XII, MWC, BigSky would ever tell you privately that they think either Smith or Burks is competent. Neither would any of those coaches hand pick Smith or Burks to officiate one of their games.

I guess Mike and Cooper were bass fishing. Even the new guy (electrician from Permian Basin) light years ahead of Smith.
 
The easiest ways to eliminate the officiating controversy:

1) Coaches from two schools choose the crew, or conference HCs choose championship crew

2) Get a competent commissioner

3) Get a competent head of officials; gut the slate and start over, but start by firing every dentist, dental software salesman, dental finance company employee, all BigSky/MWC official. It ain't rocket science to ask why so many referees with dentistry ties.

I enjoy Texas HS football. It is sad to say that UIL has multiple crews better than almost every crew doing Big XII games. Mike is likely the best referee in the country, but Anderson & Walleye have saddled him with incompetent crews.

Cooper has always been good, kinda a new generation Ken Faulkner, but I wouldn't want his crew doing my 10 yr old grandson's game.
 
SabreHorn said:
The easiest ways to eliminate the officiating controversy:

1) Coaches from two schools choose the crew, or conference HCs choose championship crew

2) Get a competent commissioner

3) Get a competent head of officials; gut the slate and start over, but start by firing every dentist, dental software salesman, dental finance company employee, all BigSky/MWC official. It ain't rocket science to ask why so many referees with dentistry ties.

I enjoy Texas HS football. It is sad to say that UIL has multiple crews better than almost every crew doing Big XII games. Mike is likely the best referee in the country, but Anderson & Walleye have saddled him with incompetent crews.

Cooper has always been good, kinda a new generation Ken Faulkner, but I wouldn't want his crew doing my 10 yr old grandson's game.
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You had me at "competent commissioner".
 
FYI in full agreement that something needs to be done. Just pointing out why I think we haven't been more aggressive about it.

Htown77 said:
Judging by the national reaction, most fans who did not care either way did seem to feel we got hosed.
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Posted this on another thread but was talking to some people here in Birmingham (most of them huge Bama fans), and the reaction was "The Big XII definitely wanted Oklahoma in the playoffs."

Joe Fan said:
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What makes this even worse is that there's literally no way to miss this. You have two receivers next to each other on the left side. If you're going to say that the one of them is actually OFF the line, then they BOTH have to be off the line, so you only have six on the line. If one of them is on the line, they both have to be on the line, and you've got eight guys on the line, including one who is an ineligible receiver.
 
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