In news that will be welcome to many Penn State fans, the teamโs first-round College Football Playoff matchup wonโt feature Big Ten refs.
Per Football Zebras, a site which focuses onโ as one could imagineโ officiating, not only will Big Ten refs not be working Penn State-SMU, they wonโt be working any of the four quarterfinal matchups, nor will any refs from the ACC.
The College Football Playoff starts Friday night, when No. 7 Notre Dame hosts No. 10 Indiana at 8. The remaining three games will be played Saturday. Penn State kicks it off against SMU at noon, followed by three more games.
CONTROVERSY IN INDY
Photo by Matt Lynch, Nittany Sports Now: Penn State coach James Franklin
Penn State fans werenโt too pleased with how the refs performed in Saturdayโs 45-37 Big Ten title loss to Oregon, and neither was Coach James Franklin.
Defensively, a physical Oregon front neutralized Penn State and did so without a penalty.
None that was called, that is.
โThere wasnโt one holding call in the game, so thatโll be interesting to watch,โ Franklin said. โAnd I donโt want this to come off the wrong way. I give Oregon a ton of credit. But the penalties were pretty lopsided, and I have more of an issue with the ones that could have been reviewed. The non-reviewable ones, theyโre gonna happen, but the ones that that need to be reviewed need to be reviewed in my opinion.โ
Of course, the penalties make up only one part of the equation in the loss. But the officiating crew had far from a banner day in the review department. Late in the game, they missed a seemingly obvious catch near the sideline by Penn Stateโs Omari Evans that, if completed, could have changed the complexity of the game.
โOne of the calls that I thought was a critical point in the game was the two minute drive with the catch on the sideline to Omari. I thought was a catch, and looking on the Jumbotron, it looked like it was a catch,โ Franklin said. โI get youโre going to miss some calls, but itโs two minutes, so everybody says, โOkay, weโll slow down so they can review the call.โ Itโs a two minute drive. We canโt slow down in a critical game like that.โ
That wasnโt the only play missed by this crew according to Franklin who mentioned a time when Drew Allarended up on the ground and a player was pulled off a pile.
โIt was a time late in the game where I thought they needed to protect Drew, where he was hung up in a pile and kind of got slammed down late,โ Franklin said. โThere was another time where, youโre not supposed to pull people off the pile, it is what it is, but the catch on the sideline, to me, thatโs a critical moment in the game, and it was close enough that it should have been buzzed down and at least reviewed. It is what it is.โ
THESE REFS JUST MEAN MORE
So who will be reffing Penn State-Oregon if itโs nobody from the Big Ten?
SEC refs, of course.
The official officials arenโt reveled yet but whoever the crew is will be from the SEC.
Penn State-SMU will be on TNT.
