The Pac-12 has announced that they've disciplined the replay officials from the 2014 Big Game. The officials were determined to have incorrectly reverse two touchdown calls; one on the 2nd down touchdown rush by Luke Rubenzer, the second on the 3rd down touchdown connection between Jared Goff and Kenny Lawler.
Here is the official statement from the Pac-12.
The Pac-12 Conference acknowledged that its instant replay crew made two errors in the Stanford-California game Saturday, November 22, Pac-12 Commissioner Larry Scott announced today.During a California possession late in the third quarter, the instant replay crew reviewed three consecutive on-field touchdown calls by the game officials on one California offensive possession.
The NCAA Playing Rules state that to reverse an on-field ruling, the replay official must be convinced beyond all doubt by indisputable video evidence.
Through the Conference’s officiating and game management review process, it was determined that there was not enough evidence through video replay for the instant replay crew to overturn the second and third touchdown calls made by the officials on the field.
The replay crew will be held accountable for the errors through the Conference’s disciplinary process.
For those who missed it, here is the sequence of plays. Watch in particular the second and third down angles the replay officials used to determined that Cal did not earn touchdowns.
Forget "the band is on the field" @MikePereira says "bandits in the booth" cost @Cal a touchdown vs @StanfordFball https://t.co/GbZ2RR4SeC
— @TheBuzzer (@TheBuzzerOnFOX) November 23, 2014
I'm not exactly sure what the disciplinary process is for replay officials (since they're actually omitted from the box score, I have no idea who they are), but it is a good step for the Pac-12 to acknowledge some fault. Since it probably had minimal impact on the final result, it's proactive of the conference stepped forward and took responsibility for the capital mistakes that occurred. There were a number of other calls that we can go ahead and discuss that negatively impacted Cal, but these plays certainly did the most overall damage and turned the Big Game into a farce by the end of the 3rd quarter.
Still, the replay officials are only the tip of the iceberg. The Pac-12 officiating crew itself called a pretty unfair game, and we'll try and catalogue all the bad calls the first chance we get. Nothing is fixed until everyone is disciplined for this affair.