Welcome to the third week of Football Follies starring the
SEC referees.

For every week since the Georgia/LSU, we’ve gotten some fine
apologies from the men who are supposed to be the
ones who insure fairness on the NCAA football field. This week, it was Arkansas who felt the sting
of the token “oops” from the zebras, receiving an apology about the 15 yard
personal foul against Razorback defensive end Malcolm Sheppard, who was flagged
for colliding with Marcus Gilbert away from the ball and set the Gators up with
a 1st and goal at the ten yard line.

The statement issued by the SEC said there was “there was no
evidence on the video to support the personal foul penalty called on Arkansas”,
which I’m sure made the entire Arkansas nation feel better about the next play
being the tying touchdown by the Gators enroute to their 6th victory
of the season (the ugliest by far, but they don’t but a “U” instead of a “W” in
the win column so does it really matter?).

Gator nation may damn me for blasphemy, but I kind of have
to agree with writers who say Gilbert even initiated the contact that led to
the penalty and that the refs just muffed the call.

This has been a trend this year, an unsettling turn of
events, especially in the SEC, that has led to many great football games (and
even the Ark/Fla ) being decided not by players, but in large part by the
officials, or that’s at least becoming the perception by fans.  What’s worse is that now all further calls
being made will be subject to argument and suspect, because you can’t be sure
that Mr Magoo is seeing the right thing anymore.  Arkansas is still huffing and puffing about
the penalty before the controversial Sheppard one, the rightly called pass
interference that pushed the Gators to the front step of the red zone, and that
one was pretty straight forward.

Again, if it was just the Florida game, perhaps this article
wouldn’t have found its way to daylight, but this has been happening weekly
here in the best football conference in the south.

Last week’s blunder may not have been an SEC official on the
field, but it was an SEC team getting boned. 
Mississippi State was driving and QB Tyson Lee completed a nice pass
that gave the Bulldogs a first down at the Houston 4, but the refs on the field
(again not SEC) ruled that he had crossed the line of scrimmage and the pass
was illegal.  Granted, Mississippi State
coach Dan Mullen didn’t challenge the play, but the official in the booth (an
SEC employee) didn’t even bother to call for a replay.  Shouldn’t a possession changing call like a
toe over the line of scrimmage be worth double checking when you’ve got two
sides shouting opposites at you?  Don’t
you want to make sure you don’t have to issue postgame apologies midweek for
robbing a team of a victory?  Don’t you
think sitting on your whistles is better than calling the wrong penalty? 

At this point, it’s not like we’re arguing between
over-officiating or not calling enough penalties period, but we’re talking
about bad calls across the board that are changing the outcomes of games for
teams in the SEC this season.  There’s
something to be said for allowing the players to play the game and the refs are
making a habit of moving the spotlight off the players and to themselves this
season, particularly late in the game when they should be as right as they can
possibly be.  It isn’t fair to all these
players sweating and aching in the fourth quarter to have all their hard work
made moot when a black and white bandit comes riding in blowing a whistle and
stealing all the momentum and, for one team, the game.  This was particularly felt three weeks ago.

Georgia vs LSU.

This was the one that started the dominoes a falling.

After just watching LSU march down the field and take the
lead, Georgia did some marching of its own, ending with a fantastic grab by AJ
Green in the end zone.  Green reached up
and snatched the go ahead from the sky in front of a home crowd who was
watching their inconsistent Bulldogs perhaps upset the #1 team in the SEC
West.  However, as Green celebrated with
his teammates, a false note sounded in the background as the shrill whistle of
the ref was heard and suddenly Georgia was on the wrong end of an “excessive
celebration” penalty, the most subjective and ridiculous of all penalties.

Word for word, the excessive celebration penalty in the NCAA
rulebook reads, “any delayed,
excessive, prolonged or choreographed act that attempts to focus attention on (a
player or team)”.  This is a pretty murky
rule, one subject to the feelings of the ref on the field as to what words like
“excessive” and “prolonged” means.  I
don’t know about you, but my ADD patience can sometimes make the word prolonged
mean anything over few seconds, and the word excessive could mean two beers to
my girl, but fifteen to me.  You can
justify just about any reason here for throwing a flag and be able to stand
behind it as you would your own opinion.

Do you see the
problem here?

Green’s supposed
infraction wasn’t celebrating with his team, that was the okay part of his need
to unnecessarily express joy at going ahead in front of a home crowd late in a
tight game.  His sin was what followed,
when AJ made what the officials perceived as a gesture at the crowd meant to
draw attention to him as he was going off the field.  Let me repeat, a young man who just made a
circus catch along the edge of the end zone, over another player’s helmet, to
put his team ahead, made a “GESTURE” at the crowd and was hit with a 15 yard
excessive celebration penalty (actually, the second one of the game for
Georgia).  The gesture wasn’t a throat
slash.  It wasn’t one hand making an “L”
and the other flashing the middle finger. 
He wasn’t even pumping his fist at the LSU bench or even using his thumbs
to answer the question, “Who has two thumbs and just put Georgia up on LSU?”.  Nope. 
Nothing close.

All I could see is
that he pointed up, either to the crowd in the upper decks or to God above
them.  Maybe there was a fist pump.  This led to a fifteen yard penalty??? 

Listen, LSU most
likely would have taken that game anyway, but to give Georgia and their nation
of die hard fans some loophole to complain about doesn’t help.  Every media outlet in the country allowed
Bulldogs  to express their disgust with
the officiating and with how they were robbed of a game that they can now use
as the excuse as to why their team blows this season (come get some for that
comment Bulldogs, we’ll see you on Halloween. Oh and an ironic note to this
story, former UGA head coach Vince Dooley was one of the people on the
committee that got the excessive celebration penalty put in, he was the rules
committee chairman at the time, so you did this to yourself).

I understand that
this last one was put in to prevent the menacing shotgun blast celebrations and
the prolonged, choreographed TD dances that were becoming so prevalent in the
NFL for so long, but to make the wording so subjective to interpretation makes
the rule weak and unusable.  These
players aren’t grown men trying to hold their heads up as role models and
professional adults; these are a bunch of kids doing something they’ve dreamed
of their whole lives, usually in front of millions watching on TV and a stadium
full of people screaming just for them. 
Most of you were kids once, don’t you recall how hard it is not to
become overwhelmed by emotion, especially in a situation where all your
adrenaline and similar hormones are pumping so high you could climb the goal
posts and back flip into the crowd.  I
don’t know about you, but listening to what seems like the entire population of
a city singing your praises would make me a little giddy and I don’t think a
gesture of celebration that isn’t filled with arrogance or threat should be
penalized. 

Hell, I do a little
dance when I pop my first beer on the Saturday before a Gator game.

This season has had
too many games decided in the booth or by people without pads, a trend that
seems most prevalent in the SEC this year, and I honestly believe that if it
isn’t nipped in the bud, BCS rankings won’t be the only controversy this year.  Can you imagine the fallout if one of these
questionable calls robs Florida or their opponent of the National
Championship?  We would see Pasadena in
flames before the night was out and the media would be calling for the heads of
every official involved in the NCAA.  Do
yourself a favor refs, get that new contact lens prescription.  Don’t be afraid to double check with another
official.  Have a conversation with the
booth.

Overall, though,
take the whistles and shove them straight up your brown highway, especially
late in games when a ticky-tacky call ruins not only a team’s chances to win,
but the momentum and pace of a great football game.  The fourth quarter, hell the whole game, is
too much fun to watch and shouldn’t be subjected to someone looking to over
rule the action unreasonably.

I mean, I know the
speed limit is 70, but if I got pulled over for going 72 I’d be pretty miffed
about it and I don’t even have to worry about all the fans and teammates I’d
let down.

Pull it together
refs, because the NCAA and BCS have enough controversy without you guys vying
for some of the glory.

Josh Bauer is a Columnist for GatorTailgating.com