Mike Tatum, the former football officiating coordinator under the Pac-12, has been getting a lot of attention from college football teams this spring for a series of social media posts calling out, from the national on down to the regional and local on each play of each game. In one series from late April, he took a swipe at Oklahoma’s “man cave” sports culture.
“This is one of those crazy queso eras where everyone is living on the edge, trying to promote themselves everywhere,” Tatum wrote. “The individual comes out on top, no matter what everyone else said. Look at Oklahoma. They have made college football entirely more entertaining.”
On Friday, Pac-12 Commissioner Larry Scott joined NBC Sports’ Pierre McGuire on NFL Network to discuss football officiating. (Indeed, that’s the only thing that matters during football season, right?) Here are some highlights, but watch the full segment at the bottom of this post to hear about Tatum’s recent troubles.
“We put a few on notice,” Hanks said. “We’re not going to tolerate it. We knew there’d be some talk. We like to say they answered the call, but it came on the national stage, and so for them, they were there to fix it and they made some changes that a lot of other conferences are taking a second look at now. They walked in the room with Larry Scott and I think they got the message.”
“You don’t see individuals drawing that type of attention,” Scott said. “A lot of these guys will want to pay attention to those circumstances where there was an official making comments that weren’t helpful.”
“Is it normal in a major college conference?” McGuire asked.
“I think it’s far too high-profile,” Hanks said. “But you know the athlete mentality in athletics, the young athlete trying to prove himself everywhere, so I can understand some of the angst that comes when that doesn’t necessarily match what everyone else is doing, but we have zero tolerance for it.”
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