Slive Keeps Acting More and More Like Selig

 

The SEC and Major League Baseball both have had many blown calls this season. Some of the missed calls in the ALCS were just plain embarrassing and the SEC is not much better. Instead of expanding instant replay, MLB Commissioner Bud Selig thinks it is a great idea to keep things the way they are. How did the SEC respond to conference referees routinely making bonehead calls? They decided to come up with a new policy where SEC players, coaches and full-time employees can be fined or suspended if they criticize the officials.

Do you see a pattern here? Selig and SEC Commissioner Mike Slive are both acting naive and would rather blame other people. Look at what Slive did to Florida coach Urban Meyer today: Slive fined Meyer $30,000 for commenting on a missed call in the Florida-Georgia game. Meyer said earlier this week that Georgia linebacker Nick Williams should have been flagged for knocking down Gators quarterback Tim Tebow well after he got rid of the football. It's not like Meyer dropped an f-bomb or insulted the integrity of the conference. He was asked about one play and responded with what he believed.

Is it any coincidence that Slive is acting this way in the first year of the SEC ESPN T.V. deal? Slive knows he has a gold mine in the SEC and all he thinks about now is money. We all know that it makes the conference look bad if a coach criticizes an official, but it is not hard to fix that problem. Make sure officials stop throwing ridiculous flags for things like excessive celebration and we won't have this problem. Maybe Slive should take a page out of Brandon Spikes' book and suspend himself for ignoring the fact that the best conference in football has below-average officials.