While it’s no secret that the Big 12 Conference has been known for having some inconsistencies in officiating, West Virginia head coach Neal Brown made sure to highlight that fact.
Following a major win over Arizona, Brown went after the officiating crew for their continuous errors.
“My thing with officiating is I just think it needs to be consistent,” Brown said. “So, the one I just talked about on the speed sweep, it was borderline whether C.J. Cole held or not on that first down, but they had a fourth down conversion where they handed off a speed sweep, and they had every bit the same hold that we had, and it wasn’t called. So, to me, we just got to be consistent in how we’re gonna call the game.”
Brown wasn’t against every penalty called, but he argued that the inconsistencies needed to be corrected. He felt that the one-sided approach to some flags hurt his team and benefited Arizona which was not evenly upheld on the other side of things.
“The procedure penalties that were on our o-line, they were both kind of unique in the sense they were really on the center,” Brown continued. “They called them on somebody else, but they’re really on the center, not snapping the ball.”
“Then, the holds I wouldn’t necessarily argue,” said Brown. Holding and DPI are so hard because they’re judgment calls, right? I don’t know if we’re consistent enough throughout, but I can’t argue that those weren’t holds. They probably were, but we haven’t had a huge penalty issue with our offensive line, and they hurt us. The penalties hurt us. We had 50 yards, and they were all on our offensive line.”
Brown wrapped up his thoughts by saying, “I thought the non-interception call when we threw the first pick, and I thought the defensive holding call, which, to me, the ball was not even close. It was a give-up throw. He threw it away, and I don’t know. All I know is we were the least penalized team coming in in the country, yards per game, I believe… and they had one penalty, and we had seven.”
Despite some of the penalities, West Virginia was able to pull off the win 31-26, and now enters a long-awaited bye week ahead of their next game.
