Big 12 Responds to Referee Outrage from Oklahoma State-Texas Game

Hopefully this is the last we’ll discuss this for a while. The Big 12 responded to all the outrage from the OSU-Texas game on Saturday (which included a national analyst suggesting the game was fixed).

“There were a lot of things that did happen in the game,” Big 12 supervisor of officials Walt Anderson said on Monday to the Austin-American Statesman. This is the same arm of the Big 12 that once (might have) apologized to OSU for botching that fumble call at the end of the 2012 OSU-Texas game.

“It was a tough game to work from an officiating standpoint.” Translation: Both teams sucked.

“Overall, I was pleased with the way the guys worked. Three were a few mistakes — and I emphasize a few — and you want to learn from them,” added Anderson.

“I’ve been working on that (Texas game) all day. I’ve seen the whole tape. I evaluate every play, and I think we got the vast majority right. The good news was the vast majority of fouls were there and correctly called.

“Unfortunately, a couple of them were missed, and we’ll correct that. I’ve never seen one perfectly officiated, and I’m not expecting to do so. None of them (mistakes) in our opinion were egregious. Those, we’ll correct that, move forward and learn from them.”

Of course this all went over very well with Texas fans (the #WaltAndersonOn hashtag is pretty great).

#WaltAndersonOn The New England Patriots: There were some infractions.

— DD (@BarkingCarnival) September 29, 2015

That’s not where it ends though. Somebody went back and totaled the flags Texas has received with the crew that officiated on Saturday against all other crews.

In 10 Big 12 games, referee Alan Eck's officiating crew flagged Texas an avg of 13.5 times/106.5 yards. Other crews avg. = 5.75 flags/50 yds

— Brian Davis (@BDavisAAS) September 28, 2015

There’s a lot that goes into a stat like this — have all of Eck’s games come in the Strong era when Texas has been heavily penalized? Has Exk done especially physical games? — but I admit it is a bit damning.

Anderson said he didn’t know if Eck would do another Big 12 game this season. But I get the feeling that he meant “he won’t not do one, I just haven’t put the schedule together yet.”

[Hook Em]