Joey McGuire after loss to Colorado: "Officiating has to be better at this level"

There's no question that the Texas Tech football team felt like it got the short end of the officiating stick in Saturday's 41-27 loss to Colorado. After the game, head coach Joey McGuire was openly critical of the officials making comments that will probably get him fined by the Big 12.

"There's a lot of penalties in this game, you know," McGuire said. "The frustrating thing is we're sitting here at 41-27, it could have been a little bit closer. We give up that one right at the end, on the turnover we don't get in the end zone on 4th and 1. But I'll tell you this man, it's 17-13 and it's 3rd & 7, and we bring pressure, and it's an incomplete pass.

"And when you watch that play, somebody tell me how you can call roughing the passer? How can you not call five obvious facemasks? One they reviewed for targeting, and it wasn't called, and then four others on our running back. It's tough for me to sit here and say too much, because it's 41-27 and you're outside like why I'm saying that, but, you know, in a game like this, we have to be better. Deion is going to say they have to be better, but the officiating has to be better at this level."

McGuire is correct in one sense. The two specific calls he referenced were game-changing moments.

Each turned the momentum in Colorado's favor and left Tech scrambling. Calls and decisions of that magnitude have to be made correctly and when they aren't, they often influence the outcome of the game.

McGuire was asked specifically about the explanation he got on the roughing the passer penalty called against Texas Tech safety Chapman Lewis. Based on his response, he didn't seem satisfied by what the officials told him.

"'I saw that he hit him below the knee,'" he said, "And I don't know who saw that, he hit in the hip. I mean, it was a great clean hit that would have forced them to punt the football, and instead. I think they get a field goal out of it. The defense played well enough to get the field goal out of it after the first down, I believe, to make it 20-13. Same way with the targeting They don't call it the targeting, but it's a blatant face mask before that happens with the targeting, and that gets no call."

Those who look at the box score will say that Tech wasn't wronged by the officials. That's because The Buffaloes were flagged 14 times for 106 yards while Tech was flagged 9 times for 80 yards.

However, the two calls that had the biggest impact on the game, the roughing the passer penalty against Tech in the third quarter and the no-call on the facemask against Behren Morton on fourth down in the fourth quarter, both went against Tech. It isn't fair to say that those decisions cost McGuire's team the game but they sure did make it far tougher for the Red Raiders to try to beat Colorado and McGuire is right, the officials have to be better than they were on Saturday.