Oklahoma State head coach Mike Gundy has handled a bizarre loss like a true professional, even if his team did get robbed of a win this weekend against Central Michigan. While Gundy has seemed to turn a page on a wild and improperly officiated loss to Central Michigan on Saturday, he isn’t done suggesting how it can be avoided in the future. The first step would be to keep the officiating in-house.
Gundy recommends only having Big 12 referee teams calling the action when playing in a Big 12 home stadium. He said he will no longer agree to any non-conference game in Stillwater unless he is guaranteed to be able to use a Big 12 officiating crew.
“In a contract with a Power 5 school, you’re going to exchange officials on your one-to-one games. Otherwise, I would not go into a game without Big 12 officials,” Gundy said. “We’re playing a school that does not want to use our officials, you move on and find another school.”
Saturday’s game was officiated by a referee crew from the MAC, the home conference of Central Michigan. The instant replay booth was manned by a crew from the Big 12. Right from the jump, this led to the extreme possibility of two officiating crews not quite seeing eye-to-eye, as we have seen rules tend to have a way of not being called in a uniform fashion from conference to conference, never mind from crew to crew.
Both the MAC and Big 12 suspended their respective crews for two games as a result of an officiating meltdown that granted Central Michigan one final play when the game should have been over, yet the result cannot be changed to reflect a win for Oklahoma State. Vacating the win for Central Michigan has also not been mentioned as a possibility, nor is it expected.
The NCAA does not hire football refs. Instead, officials are hired by and reviewed by individual conferences, so the Big Ten has their officials, the Pac-12 has theirs, and the ACC, SEC, and the rest of the Group of Five conferences have their own officials as well. It is not out of the ordinary for officials from one conference to be given the opportunity to call a game in another conference’s stadium, as was the case at Oklahoma State this weekend, but instant replay officials tend to remain within the home team’s conference.
Mixed officiating crews is just a bad idea in general, but finding a neutral officiating crew is not the norm either. Maybe it should be? Regardless, the perception is the bigger conferences have the better officials, which may be true, although we know officials in every conference miss calls every week of the season.
“The best ones will be at [the Power 5] level,” Gundy said, referring to the referees in college football. “When we’re playing in these games, we need to use our officials. Or we don’t sign a contract.”
You can be sure Gundy will do whatever it takes to make sure aBig 12 refs are in Stillwater every time his Cowboys are playing at home.
[ESPN]
