One Officiating Crew, Two Gaffes
October 20th, 2009 ║ Posted By: John Pennington ║ Permalink ║ Tags: Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, LSU
We told you last evening that the SEC has admitted that a key penalty in Saturday’s Florida-Arkansas game should NOT have been called.
We pointed out that it was the third time in as many weeks that an SEC game had featured a highly controversial call. Two of those calls — last week’s and the celebration penalty in the Georgia-LSU game — have since been denounced by the league office.
What we didn’t point out was that both of those calls were made by the same officiating crew.
So, if you see this crew coming to a stadium near you… watch out.
Referee: Marc Curles
Umpire: Ronnie Jones
Linesman: Randall Kizer
Line Judge: Micheal Shirey
Back Judge: Michael Watson
Field Judge: Greg Thomas
Side Judge: Jesse Dupuy
Scorer: Steve Howard.
Tony Barnhart of The AJC tackles the officiating issue in his latest blog post. In fact, he has some stern advice for the league:
“This is now two major mistakes that had a direct bearing on the outcome of a high-profile game. In both cases officials saw things that simply were not there. The league office has to sit this crew down for the rest of the season.”
Yikes. Sitting the crew for the rest of the season seems a bit harsh to me, considering how much work officials put in each year in terms of mental and physical training.
However, a one- or two-week ban in which this crew gets to spend Saturdays with SEC supervisor of officials Rogers Redding might be a proper punishment.
The goal should be for this crew to learn what it is that Redding and the league are looking for from SEC officials. Watching some well-called games with Redding might be an excellent learning tool for this bunch.
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