This has just bugged me for a long time.

Officials in college football are employed, paid, assigned to games, and reviewed by their own conferences. Conferences have a HUGE monetary stake in the outcome of the final BCS Standings. There is just a real obvious conflict of interest in my opinion in games involving highly-ranked teams and it has reared it's ugly head in recent college football games.

The Florida/Arkansas game a few weeks ago comes to mind, where the officiating was clearly lopsided and Florida was aided by a horrendous call late in the game.

I think something worse happened yesterday. Indiana was flat-out robbed against #4 Iowa. I watched this game from start to finish and I have NEVER seen a more stunningly biased officiating crew in a nationally televised game. Sure, you could argue that Iowa made some great plays in the 4th quarter to come back (which they did) but you can easily argue that the game should never have been within Iowa's reach.

The replay officials took not one, but TWO clear Indiana touchdowns off the board. Their analysis on the first call was that because the ruling on the field as "incomplete" there was not substantial evidence to overturn the call on the field. I was initially OK with the analysis...Indiana scored on the next play. But later in the game, Indiana caught a pass that was ruled a touchdown on the field by the side judge who was right next to the player and could clearly see his leg drag in the end zone. They reviewed it, and in a departure from their earlier analysis, decided there was enough evidence to overturn the call on the field, despite there being clear evidence that the foot dragged in the end zone. To take that touchdown away was highway robbery and they got the call wrong. Had it just been those two calls, it may not have been that big of a deal...but there was so much more.

Indiana was whistled for a bad personal foul call on the ensuing series which gave Iowa 15 more yards. The refs gave Iowa a ridiculous spot on a 3rd down play to keep a drive alive. Almost every big play by Indiana in the second half was called back for holding. Every time Indiana mounted any sort of momentum on offense when the outcome was still in doubt the officials would flag them for something. They refused to call holding on Iowa...there was a play in particular where Iowa's quarterback rolled out to the right and completed a pass along the sideline after the right tackle literally horsecollar tackled the defensive end.

It isn't just me that feels this way...a lot of sportswriters are on this too. It was all too obvious what was going on yesterday in Iowa City. It made me so mad that I couldn't even watch the Texas or USC games with unbiased eyes because after Florida/Arkansas and Iowa/Indiana I was convinced the conference officials would give the benefit of every doubt to the higher-ranked team. I think a lot of people have the same problem...it is just so hard to trust conference-employed officials when there is so much money at stake for the conference in a given game.

So what is the solution? Pretty simply, actually. Disband conference officiating crews. Instead of having a "a Big 12 crew" or an "SEC crew" make them all national crews that work in regions and are assigned games by the NCAA. They already do it to an extent in college basketball, why not football? It would at least limit the doubt being cast over the fairness of high-stakes conference games.

There is already and effort to do this. There is an organization called CFO-West, I think. If I remember correctly it pulls officials from the MWC, WAC and maybe Big XII to make a crew.

I totally agree with the O P on this. There have been some incredible travesties of justice committed by some officials over the years. Why not defuse at least some of the criticism by eliminating the "home" officials in each conference? If there were a national pool of officials, assignments could be made to put officials in venues where there would be not appearance of bias, due to hometown, etc. Randy Chrystal and Bible come to mind.

The Florida Arkansas game was unbielivable bad Officiating.

Pick a thread, choose a side, and go with it.

So-o-o, what are you trying to say???

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2009/writ...ting/index.html