Epic post, TulsaGrad!!
Here’s a conspiracy angle for thought. The aforementioned screw jobs were protecting teams ahead of us in the conference. Often those teams had chances at prestigious bowls. Now we are undefeated in conference. What if we are now receiving that same “protection”?
Assuming that’s true, which I don’t, it will last through the SMU game. The point of such protection would be to generate a game against two ranked teams. Presumably to pump up viewers and/or gambling action.
After that, we are a nightmare to anyone who would conspire with that power. The Peach Bowl would lose millions. The Art Briles issue would come up on national TV. OU, who would presumably be a long term beneficiary of such a conspiracy, would complain by our short term success. The big schools that count on the huge ad revenue would want protections to keep the bowls from losing all the potential revenue in the future. If I’m Coke or Pepsi, why should I sign a contract for ads for a couple of years if I think every Penn State or Miami fan is going watch the game and it ends up Wake Forest or Tulsa.
I do think programs and coaches who have poor reputations do get the shaft from refs not because of conspiracy but due to simple human psychology. Switzer, Erickson and Sherrill for cheating, Akers and Spurrier for being a holes, Leach for being weird and his post game comments. Replay was designed to limit that, but it really has done nothing but slow the game down and replace one subjective bias with another.
Does anyone on here think we got bad calls when Burns was coach because the refs were against the school or for the other team or do you think it was because Burns acted the ahole on the sidelines and tiny egos looked for ways to throw the flag or under stress to make a tough call, they guessed against him?
That’s why those T-shirt’s and some of his comments were not constructive long term. We can debate whether it was needed at the time and if he felt he had to do that to avoid looking impotent in the lockerroom, but it definitely didn’t help us with league issues like scheduling and arguably cost us more calls.
Then there’s the whole psychology of being a side judge getting paid a couple of hundred bucks being screamed at irrationally by someone making $110,000 for the game who maybe doesn’t measure up in the eyes of the side judge in terms of physical stature, playing career, media visibility, coaching competency, league reputation etc. Maybe if you are the side judge you have your own internal urge to cancel guys you perceive that way. And you share that with your friends, especially the guys making judgment calls like holding and PI. Maybe it’s never spoken but I bet there’s at least a little bit of “I’m sick of this guy. Let’s end his tenure at this school so we don’t have to deal with him.”
I think that’s definitely happened to Montgomery early on and I would bet it happened to ECU’s Coach Houston Friday night.