Greg Sankey calls out officiating critics in the booth: ‘I am highly disappointed in announcers’
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The Week 10 game between the Texas Longhorns and Missouri Tigers had a big impact on both schools’ College Football Playoff chances. Unfortunately, the story after the game wasn’t Arch Manning’s incredible performance or even Steve Sarkisian‘s obtuse postgame comments. Instead, it was officiating, due to an incomplete-pass-turned-fumble that preserved a Longhorn possession late in the third quarter.
Days later, SEC commissioner Greg Sankey declined to speak on officiating woes. Instead, he shifted the conversation to armchair refs, particularly ones in the broadcast booth, calling them “some of the worst officials in America.”
“We all want to attain perfection… our officiating program does really, really good work. Our officials do really, really good work,” Sankey said. “I am highly disappointed in announcers and their criticism… we have officiating experts… who are just flat wrong. And what that creates is a narrative that we’ve done something wrong. That is unacceptable to me.”
Sankey knows nobody is going to be perfect. He also admitted the conference is discussing methods to open the curtain a little into its review process. But criticism without knowledge of the situation, to him, is reckless.
“Somebody on a Saturday night, who’s announcing the game between Oklahoma and Florida, going back to something that happened at noon that he never called and asked a question about, and being critical, is unacceptable,” Sankey said. “We’ll take the responsibility… work to continually improve… [and] provide more transparency… so that we have the best-in-class model.”
The SEC has eight conference contests this weekend, headlined by Texas and LSU on Saturday night. (7:30 p.m. ET, ABC).
