Pac-12 Refs Reach All-Time Low In UW, WSU Games

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The mistakes made by Pac-12 refs this weekend impossibly lowered the standard for west coast officiating incompetence even further.

It just makes you wonder what goes so wrong in the hiring of these officials, no matter how many times the conference tries to overhaul their group of refs.

The mistakes this week included an official in the Washington State vs. Oregon State game not realizing which player had the ball and calling a play dead when a blocker went down. The play resulted in a touchdown for the Cougs, but the play was called back to the spot of the block.

Did the ref forget who was on offense and think that #44 for OSU had the ball and was taken out by the WSU blocker? Was he not watching the play enough to realize which WSU player had the ball? Is he partially blind and blows his whistle on the sound of a big hit?

I don’t think there’s an official, or even a person with football knowledge on the west coast, who would have messed up that bad. But this is the guy we have officiating D1 football games.

In the Washington vs. UCLA game, a Pac-12 ref called a penalty on UW for motioning punter Korey Durkee thinking that Shaq Thompson – who came into replace Durkee at the punter spot – came from the sideline as the 12th player on the field. The inadvertent whistle cost UW a chance to catch UCLA off-guard with a trick play on a key 4th and 2. And to make things worse, it was the head official who made the call. Supposedly the best of the group.

As a former official, Mike Perreira is usually quick to defend referees when he joins broadcast teams on the air. But this one had even Perreira wondering what could possibly have been going through the head of this particular Pac-12 ref.

These are mistakes I wouldn’t expect in a peewee game, let alone from Pac-12 refs. I don’t know what the problem is with this group of clowns, but whatever is systemically causing this incompetence has to be fixed.