Certainly, fans around Raiderland are still buzzing about the Texas Tech basketball team's 82-81 road win over No. 6 Houston Saturday night. It was one of the most memorable wins in the history of Texas Tech athletics and it will be a game that we will be talking about for a long time.
What made the win so unfathomable was that the Red Raiders won despite seeing forward JT Toppin and head coach Grant McCasland ejected about four minutes into the game. Both ejections were unnecessary given that the Flagrant-2 foul assessed to Toppin was one of the worst calls in the 100 years of Texas Tech basketball.
Certainly, Red Raider fans are sick of being on the short end of awful Big 12 officiating across all sports. That's why Athletic Director Kirby Hocutt appealed directly to conference commissioner Bret Yormark Saturday night following the chaos in Houston.
Before the game had even gone final, Hocutt released on social media a statement about the incident. In the two paragraphs, he made it clear that he was unhappy with the officiating crew's actions and that he expected accountability.
The statement read: "I am appalled and disappointed by the officials egregious decision to eject JT Toppin from tonight's basketball game against Houston. The decision, made on a play that was clearly accidental and without intent, is unacceptable.
"Immediately after the ejection, I spoke with Commissioner Yormark, who assured me that the situation would be addressed and there would be accountability. On behalf of Red Raider Nation, we are extremely proud of our team and the leadership of Coach McCasland."
— Kirby Hocutt (@kirbyhocutt) February 2, 2025
While those comments are nice, no one really believes that there will be public accountability for the officiating crew. That's just not how sports work.
One of the problems in sports is that officials are protected more than any other individuals who are part of games. While coaches and players from both teams have to answer to the media following the games, regardless of whether they won or lost, officials get to sneak out of the arena without having to answer any questions about their performance.
That makes no sense given that officials have the power to change the outcome of games more dramatically than any single player or coach. Yet somehow, they are never held accountable by having to face media scrutiny and rarely is an official publicly reprimanded or disciplined by the league or conference that he or she works for.
Though officials are evaluated by leagues and conferences, the public never gets to see the results of those evaluations. Therefore, the competence of the officials is protected above all else. While we are left to freely judge the actions of the players and coaches and form opinions about them based on how they perform, officials get to skate by with no recompense for their failures.
There is simply too much at stake in the world of major college sports for officiating ineptitude to determine the outcome of games. The NCAA is a multi-billion-dollar business and the livelihood of coaches as well as players in the modern era should not impacted by officiating blunders.
Fortunately, Texas Tech overcame one of the worst refereeing moments in Big 12 history last night by somehow managing to take down Houston without Toppin and McCasland in the fray. However, that doesn't change the fact that this incident is further proof that the officiating system in the Big 12 and around college athletics as a whole is flawed and needs to be addressed as soon as possible.