officiating

By AL GRANING

According to my calculations, Saturday had just a single intersectional college football game involving a Top-25 team, and that was the Notre Dame-Tennessee contest.

I don’t know what perception the Tennessee fans had of the officiating in that game, but the portion of the contest I watched on TV didn’t seem to be filled with officiating controversy.

I am aware the game was televised by NBC, which is Notre Dame’s exclusive domain, so the announcers were unlikely to call attention to mistakes made in favor of the Irish.

I am not positive, but I think the officiating crew was assigned by the Big 10 Conference, which assigns for Notre Dame. I do know the crew was not from the SEC.

The point I am making is that, as I have said many times, the NCAA should move quickly to adopt a rule requiring neutral officiating crews for major intersectional games. Rules were changed several years ago eliminating split crews, which used to be the common practice.

I heard tales for many years of flag fights when an official from one conference would trump another official’s call in an attempt to make up for alleged phantom calls against his team.

If I was ever involved in such a game, I didn’t know it. I saw many strange officiating calls, and likely made some of those myself, but most were by officials from our own conference.

I continue to wonder about really good and smart coaches at the highest level who will, on occasion, make what appears to be a really stupid move. LSU, though leading Vanderbilt by three touchdowns last week, had the ball with but a few seconds remaining. Instead of taking a knee to run out the clock, the Tigers attempted to run a play from shotgun and had All-American center Ben Wilkerson still in the game.

Wilkerson got hurt on that play, and his torn-up knee will cause him to miss the rest of his senior season.

Then Tennessee led Notre Dame with seconds left in the half. Though deep in their own territory, instead of taking a knee and killing the clock, the Vols attempted to run a play from the shotgun formation.

The snap to quarterback Eric Ainge was low, and he was tackled hard while trying to cover the ball. The result was a shoulder separation, possibly ending Ainge’s season.

Having already lost their other quarterback the week before, Tennessee was forced to finish the game with their third stringer who had not thrown a pass this season.

Were there circumstances about these two plays I don’t know? Probably, and I would like to hear them.

Meanwhile, I watched a 2A Mississippi playoff game Friday. After building up a 42-6 halftime lead, the winning coach rested his regulars the entire second half. His leading ball carrier, in line to possibly break a state scoring record, did not touch the ball the second half.

Coaches, along with the rest of us mortals, do make mistakes to go along with their brilliance. Neither LSU nor Tennessee’s coaches will lose jobs over their mistakes, but I’ll bet they both lose a lot of sleep over them.

And that’s official

Al Graning is a former SEC official and former Natchez resident. Reach him at

AlanWard39157@aol.com

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