SEC commissioner defends officials, criticizes announcers after controversial Mizzou-Texas game

COLUMBIA, Mo. (KCTV) - After a controversial day of replay reviews in Mizzou’s 34-20 loss to Texas, SEC commissioner Greg Sankey has made his first public comment.

In an interview Monday on ‘The Paul Finebaum Show’ on SEC Network, Sankey publicly defended his conference’s officials and criticized broadcast crews across the league, after several instances calling the officiating oddly one-sided in favor of the Longhorns.

“I am highly disappointed in announcers and their criticism,” Sankey said. “And they’re wrong. Some of the worst officials in America are those in the announcing booth.”

Saturday’s game between the Tigers featured ESPN’s broadcast team of Joe Tessitore, Jesse Palmer and rules analyst Steve Shaw. Palmer made several comments throughout the game regarding the officiating, but it was comments made Saturday night about the Mizzou-Texas game during a different SEC game that irked Sankey the most.

“We have officiating experts who -- I turned on a game on Saturday who was just flat wrong,” Sankey said. “And what that creates is this narrative that we’ve done something wrong and that is unacceptable to me and we have to address that.”

The SEC replay crew overturned a pair of Mizzou touchdowns and a reception that would’ve given the Tigers a first down inside the Texas red zone during Saturday’s game. Late in the third quarter, a controversial on-field ruling awarded the Longhorns a 14-yard gain on a fumble that Mizzou fans believed should have been an incomplete forward pass. Instead it became a first down and two plays later led to a game-tying 25-yard touchdown.

The controversial fumble came a play after a questionable ruling not to flag Texas quarterback Arch Manning for intentional grounding.

“We’re going to be wrong. We’ve made announcements, and we own it,” Sankey told Finebaum while defending his crew for their work Saturday in Columbia and at the conference’s replay center in Birmingham, Alabama. “We’re going to have debates about judgment calls, but somebody on a Saturday night who’s announcing a game between Oklahoma and Florida going back to something that happened at noon while he’s never called and asked a question about and being critical is unacceptable in my mind.”

The Oklahoma and Florida game Saturday night was broadcast by the pairing of Matt Schumacker and former Georgia quarterback Aaron Murray.

“We’ll take the responsibility. We’ll take the heat,” Sankey said. “We’ll work to continuously improve. We’ll work on how do we provide more transparency and access to our replay system and we’ll do that collectively so that we have the best in-class model.”

Sankey’s comments came after Mizzou head coach Eli Drinkwitz restrained from sharing his full opinion on the subject.

“If I say what I want to say, I’m going to get fined until I don’t have any retirement,” Drinkwitz said. “And I’m not going to do that. I’m not going to blame the officials. That would be disrespectful to Coach Sarkisian and his team.”