What Can Happen to a Bad Ref?

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Another one here from the talkback Mike Hey.

Speaker 2 (00:02):
Gary Scott Sean. You know they send a letter to
Nebraska and say, you know, sorry, but we are the consequences.
You know, we make mistakes, there's no consequences. Why don't
we find them or don't pay them for that day's game.
It's just like everything else in life. You shoot somebody,
there's consequences, you go to jail, you make a bad call,

(00:26):
you don't go to jail, but you pay a fine.

Speaker 1 (00:28):
That seems to be the key question here in the
wake of the Big Ten Conference sending a letter to
Nebraska saying hamanahamada ahamana, we got that one wrong, and
a lot of people say, well, what are the consequences
for this? Joining us for a few minutes, here is
Kelly Soalfield. You don't remember Kelly as a star Husker

(00:49):
center back in the day in several years in the NFL,
and it's been a Big Ten official for many years now. Kelly,
good morning, Good morning. I know you can't I'm not
going to go into the specifics of any call because
that would you can't do that, But can you give
us a picture of how this works with the Big
tent office in terms of grading and when they find

(01:10):
something like this, are there any consequences?

Speaker 3 (01:14):
Yes, Kary. They have a former and current NFL officials
grade the college. Officials sell by position, So each headlinesman
from the NFL, current NFL past, the NFL will grade
all headlinesmen same with back toages, on and on and on,
so they know their position inside and out. So a

(01:34):
back judge isn't grading in a line of scrimmage guy,
et cetera, et cetera. So each week they grade the games.
Officials are generally awarded several different types of grades. It's
CC if it's correct call, that's zero points. Marginal call.
They don't want it called. Yeah, technically you probably could

(01:55):
call that, but it's not something that they want called.
It's a minus one you can get for no call
where you miss a hole, you don't see the hole
and it's right in front of you. You get minus
two for no call. And then there's some situations like
this last week where official may get a minus three

(02:16):
for egregious some type of error. The points are added up.
Generally they use those points to determine which guys worked
the championship game. At the end, of the year and
then which guys work other Bowl games based on how
they graded it out during the season. So if it's
severe enough, an official has a bad enough year, ultimately
it can lead to his dismissal. But generally it takes

(02:38):
a couple of.

Speaker 1 (02:39):
Years for that to wash through, so nothing happens in
the season.

Speaker 3 (02:44):
They could be taken off a game for it. It's
happened before where I've seen officials get a you know
that maybe had a really really bad game and don't
remove them for a game or two and then put
somebody else in.

Speaker 1 (02:56):
Yeah, general question here too. You work, you work the
booth now right at the games, you're upstairs.

Speaker 3 (03:02):
I'm up. I'm upstairs. I oversee game time. And again
it's kind of hit or miss reative to what weeks
I'm on and I'm off. I was off this last week.
The week before I was at Illinois for the Michigan
Illinois game. But I did get to watch most of
the Nebraska games. But yeah, it's a work in progress,

(03:26):
and consistency is really the key, and it's not easy
for some of these guys. If you knew how much
in the time involved that they have in it, they're
not making much more than a state senator.

Speaker 1 (03:40):
Yeah, so what is the rule about about, say you
or whoever one of the other officials upstairs sees that
particular play that the Big Town apologized for. Is there
any rule about when you can call down and say, hey,
take another look at that.

Speaker 3 (03:56):
They had an opportunity to do that. I'm kind of
surprised that did, but that's you know, what happened, and
they could have corrected that error and brought time back
on the clock at that point.

Speaker 1 (04:06):
Yeah. So it's just so frustrating the fans like like like,
what were they looking at you? And again, I'm not
going to get you into criticizing these these colleagues, but
I wanted to get some clarity on how it works.
So I appreciate that. Kelly. Thanks you got to get
on to Kelly Solfeld Star Husker Center and a longtime

(04:28):
nfler and now long time Big ten officials