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Worst NU Loss (or Win?) to Shady Officiating

DuckTownHusker said:
There's a poll on the front page about the worst NU loss to officials making terrible calls. The two games listed are 1982 Penn State and 1993 Florida State (94 Orange Bowl). Both are pretty gregarious examples, but there are definitely more out there.

For me, it's 2011 Texas A&M. Yes, the game where would-be TSA Agent and TAMU lineman Tony Jerod-Eddie sexually assaulted Ben Cotton. That game was a chippy 6-9, all field goal affair and was tied 3-3 until the fourth quarter. An absolute offensive yawner or a 2-way defensive beatdown depending on your perspective. What gets me though, is that Nebraska was penalized 16 times for 145 yards, including a penalty on Ben Cotton for kicking Jerod-Eddie after he grabbed Cotton's nutsack on national television. TAMU walked away with no call on that play and notched only 2 penalties for 10 yards. Those slugfest kind of games generally tend to see charity yards racked up on both sides, but I swear that the Big XII refs were giving us a goodbye present. There were a lot of bad calls in our swan song season, but this was an entire game full of them. When things are getting salty in the trenches, you usually see both teams racking up the personal fouls, false starts and offsides calls pretty evenly.

Remember that Ben Cotton got docked twice for personal fouls. On the same play. After getting fondled. Apparently, the Big XII refs decided to give NU a 30 yard punishment for the audacity of letting one of our players be assaulted. And Eric Martin got docked twice for Personal Fouls, as did DJ Jones. That's 75 yards off fairly discretionary calls. Nobody was throwing punches.

And lest anyone say A&M simply outplayed us, just look at the stat line. Almost every single category was practically tied, from first downs to total offense to time of possession. The only difference was that A&M picked off two INTs (we had zero) but neither INT was returned for any yardage. One of the INTs was caught on the A&M 10 yard line (robbing NU in the redzone) and resulted in an eventual FG for A&M. That drive was probably the game determiner, since it took a practically guaranteed 3pts off Nebraska's total and gave A&M a field goal of their own. That series was "helped" along by two questionable pass interference calls that came late in third quarter and gave the Aggies a freebie boost of 30 yards. It's worth noting that the entire rest of the game saw zero PI calls against immaculate DBs like Amukamara and Dennard.

No, the stakes of this game weren't anywhere as high as 1982 Penn State or 1993 FSU, but I've never seen a bigger smear job - in ANY game, not just NU games - than the refs did that night in College Station.
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I was at that A&M game. There was one 15 yd penalty on Cotton for kicking at the guy that was punching him in the balls. And a 2nd 15 yd penalty on Cotton for removing his helmet on the field of play to complain about the guy punching him in the balls. Nice.
Also, we had the ball just inside their 5 yard line 3rd down. Threw a little out pattern and their D-back mauled our receiver because he was beat to the outside. The ref actually threw a flag on it. The refs huddled in the end zone, picked up the flag and announced 'no foul on the play'. We would have had 1st and goal, instead kicked a field goal.
 




Twelve String said:
The 82 Penn State game will always stand out to me as one where the refs blatantly gave the game to Penn State. I was so mad I wanted to smash my guitar over someones head. But I was young and foolish then. Today, I'm old and foolish.
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That game was it for me as well.

I wanted to smash someone else's guitar.
 
HuskerWeatherman said:
There's only two games in all Nebraska sports in my lifetime that I blame the refs for critical calls that significantly impacted the outcome against the Cornhuskers.

And both are in that poll. 1982 Penn State. 1994 Florida State.

That's really it.

There have also been games where the calls went our way and impacted the outcome. But I don't recall those as well as the two games that left painful emotional scars.

Otherwise, I think the refs mostly do a fine job given the resources -- and fans that whine about officiating every game are weak sauce.
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Critical calls? Absolutely. But I don't consider either as shady officiating (although I wouldn't argue too much about the FSU game). The A&M game was another matter. That was beyond shady and into the realm of outright cheating.

It's a shame we blew the title game, it would have been fantastic to say suck it to the Big12 on the way out the door.
 




Red Crawdad said:
Critical calls? Absolutely. But I don't consider either as shady officiating (although I wouldn't argue too much about the FSU game). The A&M game was another matter. That was beyond shady and into the realm of outright cheating.

It's a shame we blew the title game, it would have been fantastic to say suck it to the Big12 on the way out the door.
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True, I don't know that I'd call either game the result of "shady" officiating. I'm not a conspiracy theorist. I wouldn't even call the A&M game "shady." "Shoddy" is probably a better term.
 
HuskerWeatherman said:
True, I don't know that I'd call either game the result of "shady" officiating. I'm not a conspiracy theorist. I wouldn't even call the A&M game "shady." "Shoddy" is probably a better term.
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I don't recall the name of the referee in the A&M game (or want to), but I think he oversaw several questionably officiated games with the Huskers.
 
AquaGuy said:
FSU also clearly fumbled near our goal line and we recovered. The running back tried to dive over the pile at the line of scrimmage and fumbled in mid air, clear as day. Refs said the ground caused it, or something. Don't remember if the refs awarded a touchdown on the play, or, if they scored on the next play or two. Another seven points they never should have had.

That game was crazy.
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What nobody remembers is that the FSU RB scored on the previous play. He was held up at the goal line for a fraction of a second, and an official blew the whistle early. Then he kept driving and got in the end zone. You could say we let up at the whistle, but it was still a questionable call. So IMHO, the refs had their minds made up that FSU was going to score on the next play...

But even if that score was legit, there's still the phantom clip on the punt return, which would have given us the win (maybe -- still a lot of game to play at that point).

Regardless, I came away from that game knowing we had won it in every aspect but the scoreboard.
 



Beareye said:
You mentioned all three games that came to mind immediately... '82 Penn State, '93 FSU ('94 Orange Bowl), and '11 Texas A&M.

Penn St. was primarily one attrocious call. FSU was more like four or five bad calls or no calls that went against us. The A&M game was straight out crooked from start to finish; an absolute embarrassment to the officiating profession.
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Beg to differ on PSU. Not that I'm saying the officials had it in for us, but on the "TD" after the out of bounds catch, the receiver clearly trapped the ball, and he knew it. He came up with the ball like "huh?" Then when he saw the ref signaling TD he starts celebrating.
 

Red Crawdad said:
And yet that was the correct call.
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If the tables were turned (NU on offense), we would have screamed if they hadn't given us another play. Really the call could have gone either way (I think we lost a couple games, don't recall which ones, where we should have been given another play), but I think they got it right.
 
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