Pac-12 officiating: Bad calls, public statements and Washington State’s incredibly bad luck
No
team has been on the wrong end of major mistakes more than WSU
By Jon Wilner, San Jose Merc News 9/29/2022
The Pac-12 experienced its first
DEFCON 1 officiating breakdown in several years last weekend when the crew
working in Pullman skipped second down for Washington State, went straight to
third and eventually asked WSU and Oregon to replay the lost down.
The next day, the conference office
issued a mea culpa. Criticism of Pac-12 officiating escalated from there.
The Hotline is firmly in the
minority on this matter. While the gaffe last weekend was inexcusable, Pac-12 officiating has improved
significantly in the past year or two.
We reached that conclusion after
comparing the frequency of public mea culpas across the Power Five — situations
so egregious that conferences were forced to publicly acknowledge mistakes.
There have been five headline-making
instances of unacceptable officiating in the Pac-12 in the past four-plus
seasons (2018-22).
But what leaped off our legal pad
wasn’t the total; it was the concentration: Washington State was the victim in
three of the five calamities.
Given the number of games since the
start of the 2018 season, it’s beyond stunning for one team to be on the wrong
end of 60 percent of the egregious mistakes.
Mostly, it’s terrible, awful,
incomprehensibly bad luck for the Cougars.
Here are the five situations that
entered the public realm:
2018
– The infamous sequence in which the Pac-12 failed to call a targeting penalty
on USC (against WSU quarterback Gardner Minshew) after a sequence in which the
conference’s general counsel, Woodie Dixon, called into the replay command center
and voiced his opinion.
2019
– Officials failed to penalize an ASU player for leaping over
the line of scrimmage while attempting to block Michigan State’s game-tying
field goal.
– Officials declined to stop the clock for a replay review at
the end of the Cal-Mississippi game, with the Rebels on the 1-yard line and
seconds remaining.
– A kickoff return penalty on Cal that was erroneously assessed against WSU and
cost the Cougars 57 yards in field position.
2022
– The missed second down after
WSU quarterback Cam Ward was called for intentional grounding.
Now, let’s be 1,000 percent clear:
We don’t believe for a second that
there’s a conspiracy against the Cougars on the part of Pac-12 officials or the
conference office.
In fact, the executives currently in
charge of Pac-12 football — that would be commissioner George Kliavkoff and
operations chief Merton Hanks — weren’t even working in the conference
during the 2018 and 2019 fiascos.
Also, there is no connection between
guilty parties. The person singularly at fault in the 2018 targeting fiasco was
Dixon, who left the conference two years ago, while the 2019 mistake at Cal was
made by the referee, Matt Richards, who wasn’t on the crew in Pullman on
Saturday.
And yes, there have been other
officiating breakdowns over the years. Every team has been on the wrong end of
a call that leaves the head coach fuming and the fans seething.
A year ago this week, in fact,
Oregon fans were livid about a last-second pass interference penalty on the
Ducks in the end zone during a loss to Stanford.
While that call frustrated the
offending team and sparked criticism on social media, it fell within the
acceptable range of judgment decisions in the same fashion as so many other
controversial calls every yea. In every league.
To the best of our knowledge, the
five instances cited above are the only situations since 2018 in which the
conference office has been forced to publicly cop to a gaffe, indicating it was
next-level in nature — outside the acceptable range of controversial calls.
And for reasons known only to the
football gods, the Cougars were on the wrong end three times. They were, in
fact, the only Pac-12 team on the wrong end of any of the five. (The
other victims were Mississippi and Michigan State.)
Upon realizing this coincidence, the
Hotline immediately sought comment from the laws of probability.
Alas, they declined.
So, what’s next?
Well, Pac-12 officiating must continue
to improve, a process that takes several forms:
— Limit the headline-making
mistakes.
While the SEC and Big Ten each had
two next-level gaffes, as we outlined earlier in the week, the Pac-12
had none, zero, zip.
What happened Saturday in Pullman
must be the outlier in 2022.
— Continue to streamline the
operational facet.
Two areas that receive little
attention but have improved immensely in recent years: communication from
officials about penalties or issues with the clock; and the time required for
replay reviews.
The more efficiently on-field
officials work with the replay booth and the command center in San Francisco,
the better.
— Show the Cougars some respect.
Again, there is no conspiracy. None.
The situation last weekend was an honest mistake.
As described by the conference:
“Washington State was called for an
intentional grounding foul and the down indicator on the far side of the field
changed immediately (too quickly) to 2nd down. When the Referee announced the
loss of down penalty, the down indicator then changed to 3rd down
(incorrectly).”
That said, the Pac-12 should give
strong consideration to not assigning the offending crew to upcoming WSU games
this season. Imagine if something went wrong, again. (At that point, we might
start to wonder.)
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