ACC Officiating

Certainly I bring a perspective from the FSU fanbase. Much of it is a hyperbolic version of the actual thoughts and feelings of the base. It is our thoughts on steroids. But at the same time I write from a common starting point and cast forward the idea much like a field of sight in the way home plate on a baseball field opens up to an infinite viewpoint forever moving forward until walls or stadium seats get in the way.

Part of this field of view concerns ACC officiating. Every fan base thinks their officials are terrible. Auburn thinks the SEC is out to get them and Clemson fans know they are playing second fiddle to the Tobacco Road Carolina elites. That is always the perception of each fan base. Same goes for FSU. We have always been heavily penalized because our previous coaching staff did not necessarily teach discipline as much as they let players play. We accepted that, but we also hinted (or yelled loudly) it was the conference trying to compensate for the weaker athletes of the opposing team. I suspect it is 95% true for the first reason and 5% true for the second (when blow outs/mismatches occurr officials have tendency to look the other way on calls for the underdog).

But in the last few weeks FSU has seen some awful calls involving ACC officiating and we wonder if this is pure incompetance or are ACC officials tipping the scales? The first was an official inching the ball forward on a 3rd and short during a Wake Forest possession (Link) and the other was a punt return blown dead due to a fair catch call that never occurred (I can't find the link currently, but will try to update). To further the problem, the same crew on a subsequent play missed a horse collar call two yards from him.

The ACC has responded to both providing repremands for officials and explaining the issue, but it has not settled a fan base who wonders how can officials be so bad? We have even adopted the phrase "Cherry-bombed" for when notoriously poor official and Mr Giving Him the Business, Ron Cherry, is the head referee for our games.

So I pose it to you ACC fans out there, is it just a misperception by the FSU fanbase or are ACC officials just awful? Does it happen to you?

And if it is a conference wide issue, should the role of the official change? Should we have an official who can view the play as a whole and/or change penalties calls (or no calls) based on the wide view. How often do we assert that sometimes officials are too close to the action and can't see the penalty through the play? Certainly, replay has been devised to get a play right, but how about correcting or applying penalties?