Referee Steve Baron warns the UNLV band to stop playing. Late in the third quarter of Saturday’s Air Force vs. UNLV, a referee went into the crowd to tell the UNLV band to stop playing.
College FootballNCAABy Michael Dixon on

We’ve all heard of Pac-12 After Dark. Now, prepare to meet its cousin, Mountain West After Dark. In Saturday night’s game between Air Force and UNLV, things got weird.

One of the oddities of college football is that there are marching bands. Sometimes those marching bands will play when they shouldn’t. When that happens, the referee or public address announcer will usually get on the microphone and tell the band to stop. That’s kind of what happened on Saturday, only the referee took it to another level.

During a stoppage of play late in the third quarter, referee Steve Baron went into the crowd and told the UNLV band to stop playing when Air Force had the ball. And he didn’t simply hop over one railing to make his decree. Baron went several rows into the crowd, walking among the fans.

https://twitter.com/mrmatthewcfb/status/1581508411182960640

There was a lot of confusion fun around Baron’s actions.

https://twitter.com/RainsJ7/status/1581512695160840193

There’s a reason that referees don’t usually go into the crowds — it’s an incredibly stupid idea. If you go to a game, you’re likely to see some fans happy and others upset. It’s the nature of sports. One thing that virtually every fan in attendance is in common, though, is they don’t like the referees. This is more likely to be true when the home team is getting soundly beaten — as was the case here.

Fortunately things worked out well for Baron this time. We wouldn’t recommend he or any other referee trying this ever again, though.

[Mr. Matthew CFB, Photo Credit: CBS Sports Network]

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