Criticizing SEC refs can now get you fined or suspended (unless you’re the SEC)

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October 31, 2009

It’s been a rough month for SEC officials. We know because the SEC has told us so: When Georgia fans were up in arms over a phantom taunting call against A.J. Green following a late touchdown in the Bulldogs’ loss to LSU, the league went out of its way to publicly apologize for the call, and when the same crew was behind a couple heinous flags (and non-flags) in Florida’s win over Arkansas two weeks later, the conference not only singled out the bad calls but went ahead and put the offending crew on ice with a three-game suspension to maintain its credibility.

What all that "integrity" and "transparency" bought the league, though, was a lot of bellyaching from coaches who felt more freedom to join in the head office’s hit parade: In the span of a few days, the SEC levied officials reprimands against three different head coaches — Arkansas’ Bobby Petrino, Mississippi State’s Dan Mullen and Tennessee’s Lane Kiffin — for publicly trashing officials after losses, and could have targeted Vanderbilt coach Bobby Johnson and Tennessee assistant Ed Orgeron for complaints, too.

The official reprimands have been coming so fast and furious, in fact, that SEC commish Mike Slive has decided to skip the standing "three strikes" polcy and skip straight to the finin’ and suspendin’ phase of the process the next time he hears so much as a peep about the refs:

Commissioner Mike Slive told The Associated Press in a phone interview Friday that coaches who violate the conferences’ ethics rules against criticizing officials in public will face a fine or suspension instead of receiving public reprimands when they first act up.

"It became clear to me after last week that I was no longer interested in reprimands and the conference athletic directors and university presidents unanimously agreed," said Slive, in his eighth season as the head of the SEC.

Slive is basically responding like a teacher who’s lost control of a rowdy classroom: Give them an inch, they will most definitely take a mile. So now he has to take back the inch, and maybe a mortgage payment or two with him if he has to. The rest of the class can thank Lane and Dan for ruining it for everybody.

But what did Slive expect to happen when he effectively hung his own refs out like serially incompetent piñatas and took a couple solid whacks of his own? If you’re not willing to give everyone a few swings, don’t start the party.

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