We give up: let's play without officials

The powers that be decided the six officials on the field weren't good enough to get the calls right. So, they invented the video tape machine (which is probably a DVR, but we like the "video tape machine" name better).

So, they put some guy in the press box to review calls on the field when a coach challenged them. That wasn't good enough, so this year they made the fella in the press box review ALL plays in college football this year.

As proven by last week's Louisville at Connecticut game, that doesn't work either.

The Big East Conference has acknowledged Louisville was screwed by the officials in the game, by allowing a punt returner for UConn to advance after signaling for a fair catch. Worse, they let stand his "touchdown" which he "scored" when all 21 other players on the field came to a stop. It determined the outcome of the game.



It's time to scrap the video review from college football. It doesn't work. I'll take my chances with the blind mice in stripes on the field. At least they have an excuse.

The state of Husker football

Nebraska Athletic Director Steve Pederson was fired this afternoon.

Husker fans can give a collective sigh of relief, because with Pederson out of the way it opens the door to a dismissal of head football Coach Bill Callahan and a possible end to a nightmare of mediocrity Pederson has heaped on NU since dismissing winning Coach Frank Solich.

After Saturday's loss to Oklahoma State, we knew this was coming. Those usually stoic and conservative midwesterners in Lincoln didn't waste any time. Two days after the 45-14 drubbing by the Cowboys the university chancellor said enough is enough.

Chancellor Harvey Pearlman said "new leadership" is needed to assess the state of the football program. In other words he didn't trust Pederson (who hired Callahan) to find a suitable replacement for the football coach. It is therefore a foregone conclusion that Callahan won't be back next year calling any opposing fans "f***ing hillibillies" like he did on his first trip in Norman in 2004 (where he lost to the Sooners 30-3).

No disrespect to Oklahoma State, who did a masterful job of destroying Nebraska on Saturday, but the egg laid by NU was about the size of sprawling Omaha. Their players gave up. Their fans threw things at Callahan. Otherwise nice wheat and corn farmers turned ugly. Nebraska fans can live with losses to Oklahoma, and sometimes to archi nemisis Missouri -- or even the coke heads of Colorado. But to lose to those Cowboys from Stillwater? That's just awful, they're thinking. The lowest of lows. The worst of agony. The deepest valley of Husker football.

As Sunday's headline read in the Lincoln Journal Star: "This is not Nebraska football."

So it was time to take desperate action. Today they did just that. But, as Alex writes on the front page of www.soonerguys.com, the loss to OSU made this decision easy for the Big Red of the North.

-- Mike

Bias Texas Press

Post game reporting...

First we had the Dallas Morning News reporting that Jermaine Gresham did a "throat slashing" move toward Texas fans after his touchdown catch Saturday in the Red River Rivalry. The reporter had to retract the statement and issue an apology to Gresham after watching a tape of the game and seeing that Gresham was running his hand across the emblazoned "SOONER" on the front of his jersey toward OU fans in the south end zone of the Cotton Bowl. No throat gesture at all.

Now we have to put up with the Austin American-Statesman erroneously reporting that Oklahoma coaches "celebrated" a late hit that Austin English put on Texas QB Colt McCoy. The article falsely reported that all players stopped playing after an official threw a flag and a whistle was blown due to a UT false start, but that English ran over to the standing McCoy and decked him. Longhorn fans and Coach Mack Brown were up in arms over what they thought was a cheap shot.

But the video shows none of the Texas players stopped blocking, including the one assigned to block English.

The head referee who stands there to protect against late hits on the quarterback never blew the play dead, or motioned that the play was dead.

See the video for yourself:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9byZiJj4Vxw

Apparently the AAS doesn't know people record televised football games (especially THIS one), so they can see what they report is false. There was no celebration of any late hit. It looked to everyone in the stadium that play was live and English made a sack.

This is the kind of cheap shot reporting that occurs every year from the hallowed press of Texas. As bad as the Daily Oklahoman can be in its coverage, you cannot say that either it or the Tulsa World are bias in their support of OU as the Texas media is so blindly (literally) "supportive" of the Longhorns.

-- Mike