The new SEC officiating Twitter account.
NCAATwitterBy Andrew Bucholtz on

There’s been a growing focus across sports on explaining officiating calls, from networks hiring rules analysts to leagues miking up even replay officials and leagues and/or officials’ associations launching Twitter accounts to provide their perspective on rulings. The latest to join that latter camp is the Southeastern Conference. Back in June, a Sports Illustrated piece from Ross Dellenger discussed the conference changing its “we don’t comment on officiating” stance, and indicated that in addition to encouraging their broadcast partners to hire rules analysts, the SEC planned to launch “a Twitter account specifically designed to post in-game commentary on close calls.” And Monday, as part of the start of SEC Media Days, that account officially launched:

https://twitter.com/SECOfficiating/status/1150807920470310912

As could be expected with fervent college football fans, though, the rest of Twitter did not go particularly easy on them. But there were some particularly funny replies about certain infamous calls:

And some corporate accounts got involved too, from Breda Pest Management to Zaxby’s to Buffalo Wild Wings:

There were also several variations on the “Alabama pays the refs” meme:

And some jokes about the other SEC:

It makes sense for the SEC to have a dedicated account to explain their side of controversial calls. As associate commissioner Herb Vincent told Dellenger in June, “We’ve got to do something differently. We can’t keep doing what we’ve always done.” Simply not commenting on officiating doesn’t work well in 2019, and this account should be a good way for the SEC to put out official statements on controversial calls. But, as many noted in replies to the account’s first tweet, it may not be super fun to be whoever’s running that account and looking at the mentions they’ll get during games. It will be fun for other observers to see what gets tweeted at them, though.

About Andrew Bucholtz

Andrew Bucholtz has been covering sports media for Awful Announcing since 2012. He is also a staff writer for The Comeback. His previous work includes time at Yahoo! Sports Canada and Black Press.

View all posts by Andrew Bucholtz