As public criticism of college football refs heats up, it’s on the people in charge to stay cool

Utah athletic director Mark Harlan should know better.

Just last year, he was a member of the College Football Playoff selection committee that was besieged by threats so ugly and violent they required law enforcement attention after Florida State was left out of the four-team CFP field. But on Saturday night, after a late defensive holding penalty helped BYU beat the Utes, Harlan questioned the competence and integrity of the Big 12 officials working the game.

“This game was absolutely stolen from us,” Harlan said minutes after Utah’s 22-21 loss, in a most unusual appearance by an AD at his team’s postgame news conference. “We were excited about being in the Big 12, but tonight I am not.”

Even putting aside the fact that the call that set Harlan off was far from egregious, at a time when officials are getting relentlessly hammered and more fans than ever seem to believe conferences are protecting their best teams through slanted officiating, a person in a leadership position within college sports should not be fanning those flames.

Best angle yet. Obvious foul.

— Terry McAulay (@tjmcaulay) November 10, 2024

More commonly, it’s coaches who are sounding off on officiating, and it seems they too have become more emboldened to air grievances publicly, as Kirby Smart did after Georgia overcame a key rescinded pass interference penalty in its October win at Texas.

Kirby Smart calls out ESPN and the Refs pic.twitter.com/p19AVxVRTq

— NMD Grant (@NMDgrant) October 20, 2024

Officiating in college football needs to be better, especially as the stakes and the revenue continue to rise. But the men and women who do those jobs — much like the selection committee that snubbed Florida State — are doing the best they can with a difficult task. College football doesn’t necessarily have an officiating crisis, but it could be heading for a crisis in confidence if those within the game continue to feed the conspiracy theorists.

“As you get into November, a lot of moving pieces are there,” said former Wyoming coach Craig Bohl, who is now executive director of the American Football Coaches Association. “You’re coming down to maybe a conference championship, CFP entrance, emotions run high, but I think we’re going to be better served as coaches if we recognize that those officials are well-trained, they’re well resourced, and a lot of times on Sunday things look different. And I just found through the years that things are better served by having off-line conversations.”

Harlan was fined $40,000 and reprimanded by the Big 12. He did not quite apologize.

“My comments came after having just left our team locker room where our student-athletes were hurting and upset,” Harlan said. “The University of Utah is proud to be a member of the Big 12 Conference and we look forward to working with our peers to continue to enhance the league. BYU, Coach (Kelani) Sitake and their coaches and student-athletes are having a terrific season and we wish them the very best.”

Last weekend also featured the Mountain West handing down a public reprimand of San Jose State coach Ken Niumatalolo for his comments about officiating in the game against Oregon State.

And elsewhere in the Big 12, somewhat overlooked because of Harlan’s rant, was Texas Tech coach Joey McGuire going through a laundry list of missed calls after the Red Raiders lost to coach Deion Sanders and Colorado.

“In a game like this, we have to be better and I guarantee you Deion’s going to sit there and say he has to be better, but the officiating has to be better at this level,” McGuire said.

Steve Shaw, the national coordinator of college football officials and NCAA rules editor, said he doesn’t see this season’s recent headlines as a trend.

“There is typically healthy internal dialogue each week between coaches and conference coordinators of officials,” Shaw said in a statement to The Athletic. “A few high-profile situations have been in a more public forum recently, but I don’t view this as an uptick.”

Terry McAulay, a former NFL official who also worked as coordinator of officials in the Big East and American Athletic Conference, said he understands at times questioning the competence of those in stripes.

“I get it. It goes with the territory,” said McAulay, who now works as NBC’s rules analyst for NFL and college games and is not shy about criticizing the work of officials. “But when you use the word ‘stolen,’ that’s a different mindset. That’s coming at it from a different world where you’re challenging their credibility, their integrity, and that’s where I always draw the line.”

He said he doesn’t believe officiating is getting worse, but he also doesn’t see it improving nationwide. What’s happening instead is that the number of top-notch officials is not keeping up with the increasing size of the power conferences. That leads to more high-profile games being officiated by crews further down those leagues’ depth charts.

For years, McAulay has advocated moving away from conferences overseeing officials, in large part to avoid the perception issues that now exist when leagues can be accused of benefitting from certain results.

When Miami won three consecutive games earlier in the season in which questionable replay reviews went its way, many fans were convinced the ACC was protecting the Hurricanes’ unbeaten record to improve the conference’s chances of sending multiple teams to the 12-team College Football Playoff.

“If there is a controversial decision and the conference comes out $15 million ahead, ‘Oh God, we just made a mistake. Better luck next time. Let’s see if we can be any better.’ If it cost the conference $15 million, uh-oh,” McAulay said.

For the record, McAulay believes Miami did benefit from incorrect review rulings within that stretch: on Virginia Tech’s game-ending Hail Mary that was initially ruled a catch but overturned upon review, and on a potential missed targeting call late in the Cal game that could have extended a key Golden Bears drive. But, he said, the Miami fumble that upon review was overturned and ruled an incomplete pass in the Louisville game was the correct call.

This isn’t necessarily a new phenomenon. Former conference commissioner Karl Benson recalled that the perception around the WAC during Boise State’s BCS-busting peak was that the Broncos got all the calls. It didn’t help that Benson, who served as WAC commissioner from 1994 to 2012, was also a Boise State alum.

The NCAA and conferences created College Football Officiating, LLC, 17 years ago in an attempt to put game officials under one umbrella organization, with the hope of creating more consistent training methods across conferences. The collaboration and conference commissioner involvement helped bring about replay review and the targeting foul, Benson said.

“I think that was major, too,” said Benson, who also served stints as commissioner of the MAC and Sun Belt during his long career. “It showed that there was a need for a centralized oversight for football officiating from a safety standpoint.”

Regionally, there is some sharing of officials between leagues — with the SEC and the Sun Belt, for example, as well as with the Big Ten and the MAC. But ultimately, conferences like to have control over who is officiating their games.

Benson recalled Big Ten commissioner Jim Delany questioning why Sun Belt officials were working the 2005 Alamo Bowl between Michigan and Nebraska (at the time still a member of the Big 12), after that game ended with a chaotic final play that involved coaches and players from the bench entering the field while the ball was still live.

Benson said the power conferences have invested trying to improve officiating — “But are they getting the results that the fans and the media and the coaches are wanting and requiring?”

Bohl believes there is more consistency in the way the game is called from league to league, but there is always room for improvement.

“I know this, we need really good officials,” Bohl said. “They work really hard. No, they’re not perfect, but they’re going out there trying to call a perfect game. I don’t believe officials win or lose the game. Certainly the calls have an impact. And I just think that, I do believe our officials work really hard, and I think we need to support them.”

That’s good advice for coaches and athletic directors right now.

(Illustration: Meech Robinson for The Athletic; Photos: Scott Taetsch, Aaron M. Sprecher, Brendan Moran / Sportsfile via Getty Images)