TV Teddy Snowflakes Thread

His overzealous calls and reaction to coaches in large arenas make him seem at times as though he wants to be bigger than the game is officiating. He's earned that reputation over the years.

In the Big Ten as in other conferences, officials are assigned to games on a random basis. No official works with the same partners every contest. Frequently, certain officials will work together. But actually game assignments are based on a variety of things, not the least of which is official availability, because any number of officials work multiple conferences. And in the case of one official, he also splits time working for the NFL as a white hat crew leader referee. This year he worked that official worked the NFC Divisional championship game.

For example, last weekend, one of the officials who worked the Michigan-Wisconsin game, had also worked last Thursday night in the Duke-Carolina matchup.

Typically, when a crew is assigned a contest, all of the guys know each other and their intent in calling a game is making sure they are calling the same things, so that it doesn't look like they are being inconsistent from one guy to the next, even if one guy is a bigger stickler on certain types of foul calls (let's say illegal screens and charges) while another more often goes after defenders who fail to get their feet set and use their hands more than their feet to gain legal guarding position and blockouts. Some guys call more travels and off-ball stuff than others.

But most every official in college basketball look for subtle fouls, which is why so many three-point plays get called on drives and put-back shots. Officials love to make that and-one cotact call on the follow-through by a defender when a driver goes to the basket because the crowd always reacts and the official gets caught up in that sell call. And it is a sell call.

Last night, Michigan got caught in a meatgrinder officiated game. The game started out poorly and the officials called any hint of contact. You have to give them credit for consistently whistling fouls that led to 58 free throws -- 58. Of course, 41 of those went to Minnesota. And the Gophers final margin of victory was 5 points, which were accounted for by at least five free throws that should never have been shot. Those inclused a free throw on a phantom Duncan Robinson three-point shot foul call, a Teddy Valentine special call on Muhammad Ali-Abdul Rakman for allegedlgly fouling a Minnesota player while watching the ball deflect off his body and apparetly interfering with his observation as the ball rolled out of bounds. That cost two shots. And then there was the technical after a missed travel call.

Actually, the technical probably would have been justified if there'd been any Michigan bench reaction to the befuddling foul call on Michigan after the Minnesota dribbler tripped himself. Except there was no verbal response from Michigan until after Beilien got exasperated by being charged with being exasperated with a techncial and mouthed rightly so, Bullshit. Because the whole sequence was bullshit.

Those phantom calls were the scoring difference last night, not that they were the reason Michigan actually lost, because you always lose based on not mkaing enough plays, period. However, sometimes the officiating makes it harder for you to win. And last night that was truly the case.

The technical and the the phantom 3-pt foul were the worst.  Why call something you really don't see, even if it looks like it might have happened?