Posted on 10/21/2009 4:27:55 PM PDT by Dysart
BIRMINGHAM, Ala. -- The Southeastern Conference has suspended officials from last weekend's Arkansas-Florida game after the crew was involved in its second controversial call of the year.
Referee Marc Curles' crew called a personal foul on Arkansas defensive lineman Malcolm Sheppard in the fourth quarter as the Gators were rallying for a 23-20 victory. The league said there was no video evidence to support the call.
The same group of officials called the LSU-Georgia game earlier this month, which included a late unsportsmanlike conduct penalty the league said shouldn't have been called.
"A series of calls that have occurred during the last several weeks have not been to the standard that we expect from our officiating crews," SEC commissioner Mike Slive said Wednesday. "I believe our officiating program is the best in the country. However, there are times when these actions must be taken."
(Excerpt) Read more at sports.espn.go.com ...
Come now, I not always literal. Sometimes I throw things out like that for my own amusement, and it ruins my fun to append “/s” tags.
Had you seen the game you would have known UF fumbled four times, three in the redzone. That sort of flies in the face of your conjecture that UF had no significant drives that day, before the game tying drive.
UF moved the ball pretty much at will against UAR. UF punted 3 times while UAR punted 7 times. So I think UF fans were not worried about moving the ball that drive, but rather holding on to the ball in the redzone.
Basically this whole thread is another case of loser crying and winners for the most part moving on.
I saw most of the game. And UF sucked. My point stands - the drive on which they tied the game was made possible by the two penalties - that is what made it a significant drive - they actually scored a touchdown.
And like I said, I don't have a dog in this hunt. But I know biased refs when I see them.
My husband told me about this last night and I immediately remembered some of you on the thread discussing the officiating. Like this helps AFTER a game is over.
Poor Delaware but that story is funny!
Yep, the hawgs were robbed and jobbed.
Sure you don’t have dog int his hunt. Ha!
I don't. I live in PA and went to college in OK - at Ok State. I really could care less about the SEC. But I know crappy, game-changing calls when I see them. You are just desperate to explain them away - you certainly seem to have a dog in this hunt.
I am not desperate to explain anything. UF won. I could just move on and not care. But I have seen the officiating for a couple of years around the country and:
1. Officials have been told to clean up the late hits against other players than the ball carrier. So as I tried to explain week end and week out official call late hits away from the play that are borderline and hurt the game.
2. Every team that every loses a tough game can complain about some pass interference call or no call. Could the one on the clip have not been called, sure. Did they DB actually contact the WRs and keep him away from the ball sure.
The best argument UAR fans have is not even shown on those clips and it was a noncall of a offensive pass interference on the game winning drive. But the UF guy came from the side not through the UAR guy and the UF kicker had already hit a 51 yarder against them, so it is not like UF would not have won anyway.
And that really is the point. The calls were made for a reason. The suspension was not for the calls made in the UF game, but rather cummulative. UF would have won the game anyway. However LSU very likely would have lost to UGa without a bad call.
Really this suspension is an implicit warning to all SEC officials. This suspension says, that while we want you to clean up excess endzone celebrations, hitting after the whistles, etc DON’T MAKE SUCH CALLS LATE IN GAMES WHEN YOU MIGHT DECIDE THE OUTCOME. And of course under the law of unintended consequences, the next time this crew officiates your games, you better scratch and claw and fight and do anything late in the game because they will swallow their whistles now.
Sorry, it was a very, very bad call, no matter how hard you try to spin it. And, given that Florida dropped to #2 in the AP poll, others through Florida didn't play so hot, either.
That call has been made hundreds of times, but UF won and the season shall move on.
The ref himself admitted he blew the call.
So?
An investigation as to motive might be in order. A lot of other folks’ money probably changed hands as a result of those calls.
Without getting into bookies affecting the outcome of games, in most conferences, the bowl money is split among the schools.
No matter what else happens, Arkansas is not getting a BCS berth. The payout for a BCS bowl is ~$17 million. After that, the purse drops to around 6 million, and lower tier bowl games are $500,000 to 1 million. There’s a lot of financial incentive for these schools to stay in the BCS bowl hunt.
I have believed for a long time that the major conferences give the “benefit of the doubt” to the team that will generate the most money by winning. Basically, in a conference game, don’t expect a close call to go against the higher ranked team.
I think the Pac 10 is an exception to this.
Arkansas was shafted throughout the game—not just the end. Our QB was speared in the back after he was down—no call. Tebow apparently is exempt from the no-celebration rule. Actually, the whole team is. After a long pass which FL intercepted, 3 FL players converged in the end-zone, did an obviously choreographed and practiced dance, and there was—surprise, surprise, NO CALL again.
And in the Mississippie State/Florida game this past weekend, a FL player intercepted a pass, was running into the end zone, but a couple of yards before he got there he started doing a high-stepping-taunting dance, the ball was knocked free at the 1 yd line having never “crossed the plane” of the goal line, and it was recovered in the end-zone by Miss.State. Miss.St. should’ve had the ball 1st and 10 on the 35 [due to the illegal celebration] and the score 16-13. Instead, Florida was given a touchdown, so now the score was 22-13 [the missed the PAT]. The momentum of the entire game was changed by the phantom touchdown.
LOL--Nice try. But he didn't "pull up", as he ran in he "squared up" for the hit and was knocked on his ass by a man who was walking, not running. The official on top of the play called nothing. An official 20 yards in back of the play made the call. The call actually was made not at the moment of the hit, but when the FL player put out his hand for the Ark. player to help him up, the Ark. player didn't want to help him up and pulled his own hand away. That's when you see the flag come in. Watch it again and you'll see what I mean. If the FL player had pulled up, no contact would've been made, because all the Ark. player did was turn his shoulder toward the FL player to meet him as he ran in, and when contact was made, the Ark. player hit him the way every fb player is trained to do.
The leagues know who they would prefer to have in their championship games, and make it so. Kinda like wrestling.... My opinion, FWIW.
Hard to believe that you are still ranting about this, but here goes. The UF guy was pulling up. Had the UAR guy pulled up they both would have still hit but not a forceful hit. This often happens in football games after the whistle blows.
That is the ony reason the UF guy ended up on his butt is that he was not following through on his hit. Now I do not believe the UAR guy should have let up, I believe in a hitting sport like football you must play expecting to be hit all the time on every play. But the rules committee has asked the officials to clean up this kind of hit.
My understanding is they went through this on Gameday on ESPN and made the same criticism I made in my posts on this thread. Basically that the officials have been asked to clean up this kind of hit and now they suspend them in small part because of this kind of hit.
Now if all this is beyond your ken, ok. Just raise your pom-poms and go whoooooo pig soooooie. But dont pretend you understand the game and the rules.
I saw that play, and it sure looked like the ball was knocked loose before the Florida player crossed the line. But it was just one more crucial call in Florida's favor.
There was a face mask penalty in the fourth quarter against Alabama in the SEC championship game last year that kept a Florida scoring drive alive. A nothing face mask penalty where the Alabama player's hand just moved down the side of the Florida player's helmet, then the Bama player made a clean and legal tackle.
Those crucial calls helping Florida have piled up, and I repeat that in the Arkansas game there were THREE bad calls that helped Florida in the final six or eight minutes. I don't recall having ever seen a team benefit from three bad calls during the final minutes of a game. That was a first.
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