Another solid Pinkie sports weekend and this time, both squads took home a victory. We had the Cards beat Syracuse 10-9 in a game featuring pathetic offense and the Cats went to Nashville and secured their bowl eligibility with a 24-13 win over the mathletes from Vandy. Oh, and basketball season in now officially upon us.

However, this week’s Musings will be dedicated solely to portraying Big East football officials in as negative a light as possible. This post has been brewing for quite some time and after the officiating in Saturday’s game between the Cards and ‘Cuse, I simply cannot take it anymore.

First, the Big East conference has an official policy of not blowing whistles to killplays. Instead, they play by the mantra, “the play kills itself.” I can understand that, I mean these refs do have to run about a third of the time during games, therefore it’s unfair to ask these guys to blow a whistle every play to stop 19-22 year olds who are huge and built like rocks from trying to pulverize each other.

THIS IS ABSOLUTELY LUDICROUS. Ever since I played flag football in 2nd grade at Our Lady of Lourdes, I was taught to play until the whistle blows. I doubt our flag football league was so sophisticated that no other grade school football league played by different rules, therefore I can safely assume 99.99999% of kids grew up playing football by those rules as well.

But along comes the Big East in 2009 and they now want to shake things up. Great move guys. Not only do you save the officials from exerting the massive amount of energy it takes to blow a whistle, but you now open up the possibility for players to get smashed with a legal late hit.

For example, and by “for example” I mean this had occurred several times this season, a receiver is blocking down the field while a running play is ongoing behind him. As the running back is tackled, the receiver continues to block and is flagged for a late hit because remember, the play killed itself.

Nevermind the fact the blocker has no clue what’s going on behind him and is simply doing what he taught to do since he picked up a football. Forget all that, it’s a 15 yard penalty. This very thing has happened to Louisville’s Doug Beaumont multiple times and each time demonstrates the utter absurdity of this rule.

Second, THEY WERE AWFUL on Saturday. And just for the record, it has nothing to do with over turning Trent Guy’s unreal 96 yard punt return for a touchdown because his knee was clearly down. They got that right.

My issue with this crew, replay official definitely included, was primarily their complete lack of efficiency. Nevermind the fact the referee could not say two words without either stuttering or strait up forgetting what he was supposed to say, this officiating crew was the model of inefficiency. Here is my case:

Exhibit A: The pass interference call on Josh Chichester to nullify a touchdown in the 3rd quarter. It was a bad call because Chichester never pushed off. He did put two hands on the receiver, but he did not gain an advantage from that action. Plus, those two were fighting for position from the start of Chichester’s route until the ball was caught. I realize almost every single time a receiver or defensive back puts two hands on the opponent pass interference will be called, however it is only supposed to be called if the player gains an advantage, which did not occur in this case.

Exhibit B: After the pass interference call on Chichester, the stellar officiating continued with the referee announcing it was defensive pass interference and a touchdown for Louisville. Upon hearing this news, Louisville sent in their extra point squad, as did Syracuse. However, the referee was then notified by the official who threw the flag the call was indeed offensive pass interference and it should be 1st down and 25 yards to go for Louisville.

This Big East officiating crew kept up with the comedy of errors and rather than informing the two coaches what just occurred, probably because it would have been the intelligent andstandard thing to do, they instantly woundthe 25 second play clock as the Cards had their offense on the bench, including quarterback Adam Froman on the phone talking to quarterbacks coach Matt Wells. Fortunately, no harm was done as Syracuse had a substitution infracton.

Exhibit C: A pass completion was called for Syracuse, even though receiver Marcus Sales did not get any feet in bounds. In the 4thquarter, with the ‘Cuse up 9-3, receiver Marcus Sales was initially credited for a completed pass on the right sideline. The problem was he physically landed completely out of bounds. However, two officials conferred and confirmed it was a catch. NOT. EVEN. CLOSE.

The replay, on first look, conclusively showed the receiver had no feet in bounds, yet two officials ruled it complete. It was eventually reviewed andquickly determined he was not in bounds, but this incident just further proved the Big East’s ongoing issue with spotty officiating. I have spoken with people from other teams in the Big East and to a man, they all say the Big East has consistently had to deal with questionable officiating. I would be more disturbed by all this, but seeing the problems other leagues have had with officiating (Mike Slive, I’m talking to you buddy), it seems to be par for the course these days. Oh, there’s one more and this is my favorite.

Exhibit D: The game securing interception by Louisville defensive back Andrew Robinson was initially ruled an incomplete pass, but THE REPLAY OFFICIAL WAS NOT GOING TO REVIEW IT. This one is squarely on the replay official. Syracuse tried to hit a slant route while driving with around 30 seconds to go in the game. The ball bounced off the receiver’s hands and Robinson cradled the ball for an interception.

The officials on the field ruled the ball to be incomplete which was not that poor of a call. Heck, in real game speed I thought it was incomplete, as did most people around me, so I do not blame the officials for missing it.

However, it was very close and typically in those situations when the outcome of the game could be determined, it’s automatic the play gets reviewed. Apparently not in the Big East.

It took coach Steve Kragthorpe to physically stand near the hash mark to get the replay official enough time to determine a replay was in order. By the way, smart move by Kragthorpe. Once the review process officially began, it took approximately 30-40 seconds to determine the ball never hit the ground and it was an interception.

Yet, on a call so black and white upon no more than two replays, the replay official did not even call down for a review until the coach for one of the teams stood out on the field to give the booth more time to determine if a review as necessary.

Simply atrocious officiating all around in Big East football. I would like to say this is a just a bad year for officials since we’ve seen so many missed calls in all sports. However, since Louisville has moved into the Big East, it has been the rule rather than the exception. The Big East desperately wants to become thought of as a legit football conference, but that will be hard to do until their officials become, at the very least, serviceable.

Quick hits:

-The Bengals are legit. The Who Deys are the official NFL squad of the Pinkie squad (except for Carl H. who likes the Sea Mammals from Miami) and look to be a real threat in the AFC. The boys from the Nasty ‘Nati are 7-2 and a perfect 5-0 in the AFC North. Go ahead and start ordering the playoff tickets.

-I would like to personally thank the Dallas Cowboys for their complete ineptness on offense Sunday against Green Bay. Due to them not being able to get within field goal range at any point in time, my fantasy kicker Nick Folk was unable to kick a field goal which would have given me the win this week. How about them Cowboys?!?!

-The Pinkie squad hit an all-time low this past Friday night at BW3s on Bardstown Road. Apparently, our group of nine could not be entertained enough by the various sports contests being shown on every TV in the place, therefore we resorted to playing telephone.

For those who don’t know, telephone is where one person whispers something into the ear of the person seated to their right and the message is to be repeated all the way around the circle until the last person says out loud what it was. We never made it a full circle and the message usually was in shambles by the third person. Truly a low point in our history.