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Pac-12 refs ruin Big Game: Mike Pereira calls replay officials 'bandits in the booth'

For shame.

By Avinash Kunnath

First of all, let me say this to Stanford. You won. Congrats. You won so thoroughly and Cal played so poorly, I'll even call you Stanford all week. Deal? Deal.

I have plenty to say about the Cal performance, but I'll get to it later. That post needs time and focus and I need to release my anger right now.

Why am I so full of rage?

Because the Pac-12 refs blew goats, and I will not be happy until the ones that were in Memorial Stadium Saturday afternoon are all gainfully employed doing non-football things next fall.

Note to the Pac-12: Games like this will come back to bite you. You have not cleaned up the poor officiating. You have not fired incompetent refs and found better-trained ones to take their place. Performances like this embarrass the conference, disgust our coaches and don't provide fair play to our student-athletes.
Again, just to emphasize: This is not sour grapes aimed at Stanford's performance. The poor officiating was not the reason we lost the game. What the poor officiating did do was turn the game into an unwatchable muck by the end of the 3rd quarter.

  • It started with the Michael Lowe ejection on the first play of the game.

Look, I understand the rule and I understand the call on the field was correct. I've just always been against the foul leading to an ejection for what I really call a football act. Lowe didn't launch himself at Hoover, who was going to the ground. Unfortunately in trying to make a play, his shoulder hit him in the head and neck area.

  • I don't mind the ejection if Stanford didn't commit a similar ejection-worthy penalty or two against Cal players and received NO penalties of their own. There were some hard above-the-shoulder hits by the Cardinal that were simply let go.
  • Stanford didn't commit a single penalty in the first half. Not one! I'm not even sure that's possible with a Pac-12 crew.
  • And then there was the dreaded "three touchdowns that resulted in a field goal" sequence, with the Luke Rubenzer second down score and Kenny Lawler catch in the end zone both having no clear angle. You can watch them above, and Periera had more on it.

Mike Pereira

Need conclusive evidence to overturn a touchdown eh? Here is the angle on the Rubenzer touchdown that was called back.

Luke Rubenzer touchdown

Here is the angle on the Lawler touchdown that was called back.

Kenny Lawler touchdown

Yeah. I'm calling bull. Pac-12 officials could barely review where the ball should be placed on 4th and 1 two or three weeks ago before saying "CALL STANDS", and now they have the chutzpah to reverse those two touchdowns on those angles? The replay official upstairs was as drunk as a skunk and/or Condolezza Rice in a mustache.

There are many, many, MANY, more calls that went against Cal and other calls that did not go against Stanford. It seems like Cal got more and more frustrated with the one-sided officiating as the game went on, and the refs felt happy to keep on piling on. Please help us compile them so we can submit a full video review to the Pac-12 office. We'll talk more about its overall impact on the game later.

I'll leave you with these pieces from CGB's own slaphancock and Cal Reddit commenter all_teh_sandwiches.

What are the other bad officiating calls that we missed? Let's enumerate and compile.

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