So, Big Ten apologists...
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Well, when that happens, and ACC ascendency happens, then we can talk. Right now, there’s no reason to think the ACC is better positioned, now or in the immediate future, than the B1G.
There’s also the sage advice, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. B1G revenue and prestige ain’t broke.
Don't know what you mean by "conference refs." The guys that work Big Ten games aren't employees of the Big Ten. They're individual contractors, just like basketball refs. Not uncommon for some of them to work games in the MVC, MAC, or, to a lesser extent, the OVC during the same week, scheduling permitting.
Some teams and players are much more valuable than others to a league. You see those calls Aaron Rodgers got last night ? Is nothing new. Refs who want to keep their jobs understand this. It,may be true that the league wants balance east and west, and wants OSU/UM to be the marquee game every year, but so does the league sh*t on Rutgers to protect all the others. On a few occasions slo-mo replay has showed flags in the air even before the claimed penalty. Penalties against RU are sometimes predetermined. So i am not sympathetic to PSU. You have it good
This is an interesting news report from a couple years ago. It outlines how B1G officials are selected, how their work is reviewed, how they are sometimes sanctioned for poor performance, and how much money is spent on the systematic performance reviews of their work. A couple situations involving Penn State are noted.
https://www.chicagotribune.com/spor...tate-greenstein-spt-1225-20161222-column.html
https://www.chicagotribune.com/spor...tate-greenstein-spt-1225-20161222-column.html
I know this from many years of watching ACC football. The officiating is consistently terrible. Not just one crew or one guy. They all stink.
Interesting article, Dave. Thanks for posting it.
Some of my takes on it as read through B&W glasses:
1. Overwhelming attention paid to the 2 darlings: Ohio State and Michigan. Nearly all references were to Harbaugh/Michigan or OSU.
2. Penn State is mentioned twice ... both times with the descriptor "Michigan's drubbing of Penn State."
3. This quote in the article: "What might draw extra scrutiny is if an official was next-door neighbors with a coach, if the official's son or daughter worked in the athletic department of a Big Ten school or if the official donated to a school that is not his alma mater."
It seems worded specifically to allow a totally biased homer like Dick Honig to call games for his alma mater, Michigan.
4. The article mentions 17 targeting violations, 7 by Minnesota ... 2 by Penn State (it does exonerate Brandon Smith's, however) ... and ZERO by Ohio State ... which leads into my final take ....
5. From the article: "Clickbait pieces fill the void, such as The Big Lead's "This Conspiracy Theory About the Referees in Ohio State-Michigan Has Some Merit" and a Dec. 1 Bloomberg Businessweek story under the headline, "Do College Football Refs Have It in for Your Team?"
The story alleges evidence that officials favor the team that has a better chance to make the College Football Playoff, thus enriching the conference.
"Protected flagships in the Big Ten did especially well with officials, the research shows," the story reads. "Ohio State, the conference's most competitive flagship team in the years (Rhett) Brymer studied, was 14 percent less likely to be dinged for a discretionary foul than, say, Purdue, a non-flagship team with little chance of contending for a national title."
Is it a small wonder Paterno butted heads with them. He got Instant Replay but they still found a way to circumvent the rules. Whoever said to shed as much light on the data as can be done will allow us to serve notice. This fight isn't for Penn State. It isn't for the Alumni. It's for the athletes who work their arses off that this fight needs to be taken on.
Except that large chunks of it are total horseshit.
Terrible is one thing. But corrupt and biased - that is something else and the root of our concern. And it should be - it has literally cost PSU probably a dozen games over the last 10 years.
This would still be the case in the ACC. Our shirts are blue, it would be Fredicksburg part II
Don't agree with you. Just moved back to State College after 20 years living and practicing in South Carolina. Most of my friends in the Southern area from Georgia, South Carolina and lower North Carolina like Penn State as a second team. They always were impressed with Paterno and the way we did things. That included my Bama friends. I always got texts during games up here with encouragement and congratulations on wins and still do. Then again most of them were golfing buddies. Took some sh.t from Northern friends transplanted down there during Sandusky however.
Did I ever say anything about the ACC except for your comments about thinking that that was the place everyone complaining about the "referining" would want to go!!!! You have some sort of fixation about the ACC!!!! I think you also have some sort of fixation about the B1G leadership!!! It appears that Jimmy got soft on you again!!!!! Hopefully, you have a couple of 'fluffers" around to help you in your appointed task!!!!
The description of the review process is a crock. Greenstein is nothing more than a Big Ten shill.
LOL seriously? You’re the one that quoted another poster who referred to conference affiliated crews, and suggested they should have regional or national refs. You then claimed the conferences would never cede the power of conference refs over a regional or national model.
And now you’re questioning what I mean by conference refs?
If there is no difference in refs between football and basketball, and there are no conference (or conference affiliated) refs in football, then what were you talking about that the conferences wouldn’t cede control over?
Conferences hire, assign, and evaluate their own refs. But they are basically each independent contractors working the games in which they are assigned to that conference. It’s more pronounced in basketball, because guys are working 6-7 nights a week for multiple conferences (then once you reach the NCAA tourney, the NCAA takes over the assigning).
Switching to the ACC would set Penn State back to square-one with the refs. Do you think the ACC is going to let a Big Ten team come in and win their conference? Or do very well? No chance. It takes a decade to integrate and have everyone not consider you an outsider.
The obvious systematic cheating is done by all conferences (especially in the South) to keep their playoff-contender undefeated. I think what Penn State experienced at Iowa was simply a home-field thing with a biased ref, which happens frequently, probably to keep attendance up. Although you might be getting some mistreatment due to lingering effects from your scandal.
I don't see a reason to give you guys bad officiating for too much longer. So I wouldn't call for doing anything rash. Me...I'm hoping my Gophers get a fair shot the rest of the way. I'm mad that the NFL cheated and made the Packers win last night.
The obvious systematic cheating is done by all conferences (especially in the South) to keep their playoff-contender undefeated. I think what Penn State experienced at Iowa was simply a home-field thing with a biased ref, which happens frequently, probably to keep attendance up. Although you might be getting some mistreatment due to lingering effects from your scandal.
I don't see a reason to give you guys bad officiating for too much longer. So I wouldn't call for doing anything rash. Me...I'm hoping my Gophers get a fair shot the rest of the way. I'm mad that the NFL cheated and made the Packers win last night.
Spoken like a true Big10 non-big2. - if you want to continue behind a doormat, keep acting like one!
The following, which is a good summary of what exists for both basketball ad football. There is fundamentally no difference and my comment was that the conferences would not cede control to the NCAA, which the post to which I replied suggested and which I don't think is a bad idea.
Football is run by each conference. That is why.
The NCAA is a governing body created by it's member schools/conferences. There is no reasonable way that the NCAA could manage referees for all 140 FBS institutions.
Regional refs leave their jobs and fly regionally. It's a regional part-time job.
I did not know that about football refs - I thought they contracted with a specific conference. I had always (heard? assumed?) it was big deal for a ref to get bumped from a G5 conference to a P5 conference due to exemplary work. (relatively exemplary, perhaps). And they sometimes work 1AA games/confs besides their usual assignments.... never knew that. thanks.
Is there a shortage of refs? I sometimes wonder how, in the early season when most of the non-conf games happen, there are enough to go around. The B1G-contracted refs, for example, would have to potentially cover 14 games (in the extreme) instead of 7.
After I first read the piece three years ago I called Jerry Markbreit, who I've known for years, and he said it was a crock. Good enough for you.
No. Where is it misrepresenting facts?
I would think you would have a better source than an 85 year old guy who last officiated in the B1G when Jerry Ford was President. If that's your source it is not exactly an engaged one with current experience.
What's up with the irritable old man routine?
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Once you get out of the NFL, where the (officiating) product is also far from perfect, it's amateur hour. This summarizes it in a nutshell: Bill Carollo, who oversees Big Ten officiating, also performs the same functions for the MAC and MVC as well as lot of other stuff that he juggles in his retirement.
Reality is that the game has gotten too fast for seven or eight people to adequately officiate it, particularly when some of them are in the mid-40s to mid-50s. People have tossed around ideas of adding bodies, but none of the proposed configurations have gained any traction, either because there are too few bodies to make an appreciable difference or so many that they get in the way. Th NFL has people that look at the uses of technology, but those efforts seem to be half-hearted.
You mean the "85 year old guy" who was cited in the article as being part of the Big Ten's review process? I'm done with you, dipstick.
The Big Ten had plenty of exposure to the NYC market prior to the addition of Rutgers. Doesn't appear to have increased. Can't speak to DC.
So you think that Delany didn't have measures of extant "exposure" in the NYC market and projections of what it would be with the the addition of Rutgers? If those numbers differed wildly from the current reality, then Delany should sue the media analysts he employed for malpractice.
The real, and only, multiplier for NYC (and elsewhere) is ND, like it or not.
After the Nebraska debacle, the Big Ten office did a far better job of containing leaks. My own speculation of what was behind the Rutgers decision is ego and justification to have an office in Manhattan.
Thanks.
It's a dilemma. But the interest has to be first and foremost within getting it right. I can see how that answer may not be found on the field with more officials. With 8 in college (I think) on-field officials now, covering 22 players, you'd think the >1-to-3 ratio was plenty. While safety has to be a top concern, there probably needs to be few changes to give the officials a few fewer things to look for. How much safety is added by the 'hands to the face' rule that is in full force, especially in the NFL? Hands in under the facemask, the old Deacon Jones head slap, etc. are rightfully banned. But as usual, the intent of the rule does not match the overall impact by the more fringe interpretations of the rule. And that leads to what happened Monday night - it gets misapplied for whatever reasons.
Getting the calls right, which means increased use of technology, also means not excluding certain calls as non-reviewable, imo. I appreciate the concerns about how much time that potentially takes over the course of a set of downs, a drive, a quarter, a game. But, I'd rather add a couple minutes using a neutral reviewer than get a game-changing call wrong, when it is fairly easily caught and corrected.
It seems as though the NHL is having some success with the reviews being done outside of the arena. Not that I watch a lot of NHL hockey in the regular season, and I don't know the conditions around calling for reviews, but others have commented that they have their system working pretty well, which I take to mean it's quick and decisive and usually right.
Just venting, I guess. Frustrating as hell to see this stuff nearly every week. I appreciate the insight and info you've provided.
