College Football Officials Publicly Punished For Missed Call

If you are a sports fan, there’s likely been at least one time if your fandom that you have been left angry because the officials during the game got a call blatantly wrong.  Ok, so you’re a sports fan and saying there’s only been one time you’ve been made ref’s is such an understatement I know. 

One of the biggest complaints by fans as well as coaches and players is that when an official gets a call wrong, there seems to not be any acknowledgement or punishment. Think about it, you make a major mistake at work and it’s likely there is going to be some sort of repercussion. 

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That has finally happened in the world of college football as earlier this week, the Big 12 Conference announced they were removing the crew that was assigned to work the game on Friday night because of a blown call from this past weekend. 

What Happened?

The reason is that they got a call wrong in the game last week between Kansas and Missouri. The incident happened in the second quarter following a safety by Missouri which meant Kansas had to kick the ball back to the Tigers. The kick back was supposed to be a free kick, but instead the Kansas Jayhawks were allowed to punt the ball which is a violation of the NCAA rule book. 

The second quarter was a rather contested one where Missouri scored 15 points to tie the game at 21. The Tigers went on to win the game 42-31. 

The Big 12 Conference released a statement saying that when a rule is broken, or a call is blown, they take that very seriously and there will be punishment. They feel, like most conferences, that they’re officiating crews are the best in the country, and by publicly holding them accountable will ensure more accurate results in games moving forward.  

I guess we’ll all have to see if that’s the case, and if other conferences begin to follow suite with this type of public announcement.  We’re all human, officials included, but it sure seems they’ve been given a lot more grace than most of us if we had made a big error on our jobs.