Sports Lynx Blog

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Being a die-hard USC Trojans fan, I watch a ton of Pac-10 sports. I have come to a conclusion the past several months which was capped off and confirmed in the waning moments of UCLA’s comeback win over Cal yesterday; if I was a PAC-10 coach in any sport playing an inter-conference game, I would request the other conference’s referees or officials. I am dead serious when I say this.

Yesterday’s fiasco is Westwood was embarrassing for the PAC-10. Let’s reset the moment for everyone, Cal is leading UCLA 80-79 with roughly 2 seconds remaining in the game. Cal inbounds the ball under it’s own basket at which point UCLA is trying to give a foul. UCLA basically arm bars the Cal player receiving the ball, no foul is called. Ok, no problem, the ball bounds away from the Cal player off a UCLA player out of bounds. Cal is to inbound the ball again, right? Wrong! You see the morons doubling as officials in the striped shirts think the ball went off Cal thus awarding the ball to UCLA to inbound near the Cal hoop. Ok, you ready for this, here comes the icing on the cake.

UCLA gets the ball to Josh Shipp who literally goes behind the Cal basket, shoots the ball over the backboard and into the hoop for what UCLA thinks is the winning shot. According to the refs, it is the winning shot and UCLA celebrates. Folks, here is the one problem with this, in the rules it is clear that a ball traveling over the backboard at any point in its flight is out of bounds. The officials looked at instant replay but without their seeing eye dogs available at that point, they ruled it a basket.

I do not write this post based on any one game, I watched a game two-weeks ago with USC playing at Arizona St. This game was tied at halftime, in the 2nd half Arizona St shot 36 free throws to 2 for USC. If any of you have played or coached basketball, that is almost an impossibility. During football season I watched USC games where the Trojans had 12-14 penalties (many of them legitimate) and the other team had two or three. Most of you probably live on the east coast thus you don’t watch that much PAC-10 action, however, if you get the chance watch a couple games and see what you think.

I know Pete Carroll has been complaining about the officiating in the conference now for the last couple of years; keep in mind that this isn’t “sore loser syndrome” on Pete’s part as he has won the PAC-10 title a record 6 straight years. Also, I am only pointing out games that stand out in my mind, however, I have watched games where say Oregon is playing Arizona and I see the same things happening.

My only hope is that the buffoons from the PAC-10 don’t get assigned a big-time NCAA tournament game and ruin some team’s season. The PAC-10 officiating is truly run by a “PAC” of morons.