Four of the five of college football’s Power Five conferences utilize an off-site officiating command center to collaborate with the on-site game day officials during replay reviews – every conference but the Big Ten. But it sounds like the Big Ten is at least considering changing this heading into the next college football season.
While every other Power Five conference uses a centralized off-site command center for their video reviews, the Big Ten officials still rely on a small screen taken onto the field during the games. But a Big Ten head coach told On3 that he believes “everybody is on board” with potentially changing this heading into next season.
“I think everybody is on board with exploring it and looking into going to do it,” a Big Ten head coach told On3. “The conference would have to figure out if this is feasible and if it’s financially attainable here quickly if it wants to get it done before this fall.”
In fact, the coach says that the Big Ten coaches actually agreed to the change already and thought it was going to be approved unanimously by the conference athletic directors. But that wasn’t the case.
“We voted to do it as coaches, it went to the ADs,” the Big Ten head coach said. “It looked like it was unanimously voted to approve to do it (by ADs). But what we’ve learned as coaches, especially through COVID and beyond, is once we leave the room, we have no idea where this stuff is going. It’s an interesting time. It’s a really interesting time.”
We’ll have to see if the conference makes the change this year.
[On3]
