I wondered abt that too but it was a dead ball foul

Last 3 weeks we've been hit hard with penalties and still able to come out on top. Idk if the Officials seem to have a vendetta against Clemson or what, but between all the timely penalties that go against us and the one clip going around showing the ref look back at the 1st down marker before making a side step to get the 1st down, just seems Dabo should go ahead and risk a slight fine and call them out. The fact this front 4 can't draw a single holding call when we see a dozen every game in plain site is just unreal.
Last 3 weeks worth of penalties avg 9 for 96 yards a game
vs Wake: 10/120 yrds
vs NC St: 9/95 yrds
vs FSU : 8/72 yrds

The majority of the TDs Wake and NC ST got were flag ridden to keep drives alive. I pretty confident none of those games would've been close if not for all the timely penalties. I'll 5 for 50 yards at this point. It's almost like the officials and Vegas have something going on to keep things around the line. Just crazy how it keeps working out that way week in and week out. At the same time, all those teams should feel like crap to receive all that help in the games....just to lose anyway!

djb_ws®

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Re: The one thing that is so frustrating game in and game out is

Oct 17, 2022, 1:51 PM

I'm a high school football official, so I tend to give the refs the benefit of the doubt more often than not. Refs look at the game completely differently and each ref has a key or assignment on each play. And even if there is a callable hold, if the referee whose area of responsibility it happens in can't see it, another official isn't going to call it. We refer to it as "fishing in someone else's pond". Basically in HS 5 man crews, I as a back judge can't call encroachment or false start even if it's obvious to me. Those are the wing officials' calls (Head Linesman and Line Judge).

But yes, I have noticed for years now that Clemson Defense will not have a hold called on it. The most egregious example I can remember was the 2016 Pitt game. I was there in the Upper Deck. Duane Heydt, the White Hat, refused to have his crew call holds on Pitt's OL, which is what allowed Conner to gash us and Matt Canada to call those stupid shovel passes. Duane Heydt is a SCar grad, for what it's worth. I don't think he's on the take or intentionally calling against us (or other White Hats for that matter). But being an official myself, we do have opinions about the teams we officiate and in a lot of cases, certain teams/coaches have less of a leash in terms of what they can get away with when protesting or complaining about calls. Officials are still human which means they are prone to unconscious bias in that regard.

The other side of this is how political officiating is. To get to even small DIII/DII college ball, traditionally you had to do at least 10 years of Peewee/Middle School/HS ball before you could even sniff college. And even then, to make the jump to college, you have to be assigned big high-profile games or playoff games to get noticed by college conference scouts (conferences hire officials at the NCAA level). To do that, you have to brown nose your local officials' association assigner or association president. It's disgusting how much @$$ kissing I saw when I first got started. On top of that, it's all old farts that haven't played on a football field since the Veer was the dominant offense. These old guys hog all the good games to themselves and hook up their buddies. They also are super abusive to younger and newer officials, which is why the retention rate for officials is so bad right now. So considering a huge conference like the ACC, most of the officials working for the conference had someone on the inside helping them out. It's always been that way - good ole boy network at its finest. On top of that, the way games are scheduled, they're biased in favor of retirees or people that own/run their own businesses. Normies like us that have 8-5s typically are screwed because so many games start at 3:30 - 4:30pm.

Just some insight into officiating and how it works. I've noticed how bad it's gotten in recent years and the political aspect of it is what I blame. You don't have the best officials at the college level because of how it works at the HS level.