AUSTIN — The head of Big 12 football officials called Texas coach Mack Brown to apologize for several botched calls in Texas' 41-36 win over Oklahoma State Saturday night, two Texas sources told Barking Carnival.
Walt Anderson "apologized profusely" while admitting to Brown that an OSU player did indeed touch a disputed kickoff and the call on the field was incorrect, one source said.
The source said Anderson told Brown the call was botched by the entire crew, who never signaled or threw a flag for a kickoff out of bounds, which is an illegal procedure foul. A second source added that the replay crew were a bunch of incompetent boobs and that Anderson apologized super-profusely for their blindness and/or willful malfeasance.
Big 12 Associate Commissioner-Communications Bob Burda said in an email Wednesday evening that per the conference’s officiating program protocol, dialogue regularly occurs between coaches/administrators and conference staff. The conference has not used its official Twitter account to deny that it acknowledged this blown call and others and issued an apology to Texas. Furthermore, the league office has not been able to confirm that their officials know what holding looks like as not a single such penalty was called during the game on either team over the course of 147 offensive snaps.
Texas' spokesman has had no comment so far and has not stated whether athletic director DeLoss Dodds is aware an apology has been made, and has not confirmed if Dodds and Brown have seen or spoken to each other since the time of the call.
After scoring to take a 34-33 lead with 5:48 to play, Nick Rose squib-kicked the ball and it bounded toward an OSU player. The OSU player raised his right hand to field the ball and clearly made contact as viewed by every available camera angle. The player attempted to chase the ball down before it went out of bounds then hung his head in shame for the terrible play he had made.
The call of kickoff out of bounds was reviewed by the replay booth, and confirmed.
Mike Pereira, the former vice president of officiating in the NFL and current Fox rules analyst, said during the game broadcast that only an incompetent boob would be unable to see the touching on the play, which the field referee quickly confirmed when announcing the result of the review.
Additionally, a Big 12 source told Barking Carnival that conference officials determined Sunday that the original replay decision was horrifically incorrect, but that kind of thing happens.
