This thred reminds me of all the favorable calls that Kentucky basketball, under Adolpn Rupp and Alabama football, under Bear Bryant, once received.. There was a basketball referee that worked SEC games for about forty years. He finally retired and at his retirement party a reporter asked him how he got his start in officiating games. His answer was, Coach Rupp got me the job as an SEC referee. My thoughts were yeah and you paid him back at every opportunity.
I'm sure there are a few bad apples, but for the most part, I think it's just a bunch of incompetent old farts in striped shirts.
Up until the Auburn game, in all truthfullness, I'd only used the "the refs are paid" line to make me feel better after a loss. But I've never in my life seen a call made on the field and then picked up. Has anyone else? Now, that may or may not (most likely not) indicate that somehow the refs were bribed. I think if there's any foul play involved, it has to come down to personal bias. As other people have said, it'd have to be quite a scheme to blackmail or bribe the entire ref squad, and even THEN it's not guaranteed. I mean, you never see the refs REALLY manufacturing calls. All the horrible calls they make are nonetheless most probably MISTAKES. I've never seen refs call a touchdown a safety, or a first down really fourth, or anything that is OBVIOUSLY wrong and deliberate, plain to both opponents. Do you see what I mean? Either the refs are extremely covert about how to subtly influence the penalties in a game to reach a desired outcome (which seems unlikely seeing as how generally incompetent they are anyway), or they're just making mistakes. I think the calls in the Auburn game were horrible, but nothing more than stupid, unfortunate mistakes. I think if there were any REAL foul play, it would've come to light by now, because it'd be plainly evident (i.e. calling a touchdown a safety, or something similarly retarded.)
You mean like calling a PI even though the ball was intercepted and then not calling a PI because the ball was tipped - excuse me, it was deflected.
I don't believe that the refs of last game were brided. I don't think that schools or boosters would bride refs, but I would imagine that some offshore or overseas gambling sites would have no problem mettling if they were given the opportunity.
i really dont know what to think on the issue... but i know that there have been several times recently that the officiating seemed off base and then someone does some research and finds out that one of the guys: was a trainer for belotti in highschool, is a lubbock businessman and there's even video of a ref giving a fist pump after texas scored a td recently. im ignorant about much las vegas/mafia crime so it wouldnt shock me if the rug was over my eyes on biased officials
Well I know that I am a die-hard LSU Tiger fan. But one thing keeps nagging at me. If it's not vegas or the mafia doing this then who could it be? A huge game like this with a NC at stake would be a great game to rig. Point spread was 3.5 eh? If I was a coach and with the blantant no calls and over-turned calls on the field. I would of kicked a feild goal, just to screw up the point spread. Sure this is a stupid call on the field, however if the refs blantantly make a call that would back the team out of feildgoal range then that would tell me that the game is RIGGED. I might of done it just to see if something that blantant would happen, also I Would have my camera crew filming the faces of all the refs when my kick unit ran on the field. Unless the refs have a stone cold poker face, something would show and that kind of un-diputable evidence along with the poorly called game for LSU would be enough for said coach to make a case with NCAA, SEC and the press in general. Not even ESPN with it's obvious hate of the SEC could over look the FACTS! Sure the idea sounds stupid from the on-set but it takes drastic action to expose crap like this. That's what these scam artist count on. They know that no coach cares about the point spread, so the coach will play for the win. Ok now you can attack the idea as stupid, however given what happened saturday, I would of gotten a little fuzzy feeling knowing that even tho our NC hopes got crushed, well atleast we made someone, somewhere lose a crap load of money.
