For many viewers watching Saturday’s matchup between Texas and Missouri, the officiating quickly became a point of concern. Several calls appeared questionable or went Texas’s way, enough that broadcasters Joe Tessitore and Jesse Palmer raised the issue during the game.
Palmer said he would be furious if he were watching as a Missouri fan.
“I’m just going to say this. I have no stake in the game, but if you’re a Missouri fan, if you’re Eli Drinkwitz, you are livid,” he said. “It does feel like a lot of these calls are going against Missouri today.”
He returned to the subject in the fourth quarter after a Texas defender knocked down a Missouri receiver away from the play. Palmer believed the contact warranted an unnecessary-roughness penalty, which would have given Missouri a first down and 15 yards. No flag was thrown.
“I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I think on that last play, this crew missed another call that negatively impacts Missouri,” Palmer said.
One of the game’s most disputed decisions came in the third quarter, when Texas quarterback Arch Manning appeared to lose the ball on a third-down play. His arm seemed to be moving forward as the ball came loose, which would have made it an incomplete pass. Instead, officials ruled it a fumble, and Texas recovered for a 14-yard gain and a first down. The Longhorns scored shortly afterward.
The ruling drew heavy criticism, in part because of its potential effect on the game. Missouri coach Eli Drinkwitz was visibly angry, though he held back from directly blaming the officials.
“If I say what I want to say, I’m going to get fined until I don’t have any retirement, and I’m not going to do that,” he said. “I’m not going to blame the officials. That would be disrespectful to Coach Sarkisian and his team.”
SEC commissioner Greg Sankey addressed the criticism, but focused his remarks on the broadcasters rather than the calls themselves.
“I am highly disappointed in announcers and their criticism, and they’re wrong,” Sankey said on a radio program. “Some of the worst officials in America are those in the announcers’ booth.”
He added that he had heard an officiating expert discuss a game and believed the analysis was simply incorrect. Sankey said such commentary creates a narrative that the conference has done something wrong, which he called unacceptable.
The controversy was significant enough that Missouri athletic director Laird Veatch published an open letter calling for greater transparency from the SEC. Sankey’s decision to criticize the broadcasters instead drew a response from Terry McAulay, an officiating analyst and former referee.
McAulay said football commentators today are more knowledgeable about the rules than they have been in the past, and generally show more support for officials. He noted that the rules can be complicated, and that both broadcasters and officials sometimes get decisions wrong. When a call involves a rule rather than a judgment made in real time, he said, broadcasters have a responsibility to explain what they believe happened.
He suggested the SEC would be better served by working with its broadcast partners on rules and officiating than by making broad criticisms of announcers.
That seems fair. Broadcasters don’t usually dwell on officiating unless they think a call is especially difficult to ignore. That doesn’t prove the SEC was trying to help Texas; questionable calls can happen without any larger scheme, and fans on both sides had complaints. Still, blaming the announcers rather than addressing the disputed calls is a hard response to accept.
Sankey has often pushed for a larger SEC presence in the College Football Playoff. His criticism in this case, though, reached beyond the broadcasters to the many viewers who questioned what they saw.
