Greg Sankey didn’t spend his latest comments trying to dodge the officiating debate from Texas-Missouri. He went straight at the people fueling it.
The SEC commissioner addressed the fallout from the Week 10 matchup between the Texas Longhorns and Missouri Tigers, a game that carried major College Football Playoff implications for both teams. But the headline after the final whistle wasn’t Arch Manning’s incredible performance or Steve Sarkisian’s obtuse postgame comments. It was the officiating controversy surrounding an incomplete-pass-turned-fumble that kept a Longhorn possession alive late in the third quarter.
Days later, Sankey made clear he wasn’t interested in piling on the officials. Instead, he aimed his frustration at the broadcast booth, where he said critics were creating noise without doing the work.
“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.”
He went even further in his defense of the league’s officiating.
“Some of the worst 'officials' in America are those in the announce booth.”
“I am highly disappointed in the announcers.”
Sankey also said the conference understands perfection is unrealistic, and he acknowledged that the SEC is discussing ways to open up its review process more. Still, he drew a hard line at criticism he считает uninformed.
“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.”
LSU is next on Saturday night at 7:30 p.m. ET on ABC.
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