Not only was the officiating horrid in the Iowa game. Really, one penalty for one yard vs Iowa and zero holds!!

But the league has omitted Mich St was on the wrong end of two bad calls. I saw the second one where the receiver's jersey was clearly yanked. And on the next series Mich St was flagged for a much lesser tug. Setting up the winning TD in TO.

"Against Michigan two weeks ago in East Lansing, Malcolm Bell timed a snap perfectly, sacked Bryce Underwood, and jarred the ball loose and it was picked up by Jordan Hall in a tight game.

The turnover would have given Michigan State the ball near midfield with a chance to go down and make it a one-score game. Instead, a late flag signaled that Bell was offsides despite the replay clearly showing that he timed the snap perfectly and didn’t do anything illegal. Michigan was given the ball back and it ended up scoring shortly after to put the game out of reach.

As if that wasn’t bad enough, that bad call was followed up by the refs overturning an interference call in overtime at Minnesota on a third-and-short play. It was a clear interference on replay, and the ball was even spotted to reflect the penalty with the teams about to line up for the next snap, but about 90 seconds later, the officials picked up the flag and moved the ball back for fourth down."

Both ref groups are bad but for different reasons.

The Pac-12 refs were flag happy and replay happy. They threw flags at almost any contact all the time. It was frustrating from a Duck perspective because we often wanted to be the more physical team and we'd get flagged for breathing on Washington State receivers funny. Sure they also missed plenty of calls but they threw loads of flags. What made it more difficult from a viewer's standpoint was that they would also go to replay for what felt like forever and did it frequently. Pac-12 refs were really just awful for slowing down the game.

Occasionally it felt like they tried to put their thumb on the scale. Namely whenever we were in a close game with Stanford. But it always felt like the biggest Pac-12 ref crime was slowing down the game to a crawl.

The B1G refs are the opposite. They rarely throw flags and let things just play out. That is... unless you're a blood blood. Other B1G fanbases warned us upon joining saying the refs and the conference always seemed to work to protect their blue blood teams of Ohio State and Michigan. Remember against Ohio State last year how they didn't take a look at that obvious fumble on Ohio State's first drive? If that fumble stands that's 7 points off the board for Ohio State!

Again Iowa I saw Bear Alexander held on a majority of snaps without a call.

The no-calls are egregious.

Both conferences have/had bad refs but for different reasons.

Part of me wishes that coaches had one challenge per game where they could challenge any type of call - even “non-reviewable calls.”

That Michigan State offsides you described would have been the perfect opportunity to use that challenge.

vs Iowa, it seemed like the Big 10 refs were bending over backwards to protect the Big 10 team...oh, wait, What?

might take a while to overcome the problem of being the new kid in school.

Does anyone if ‘there’s a formal complaint process that (Big10)teams can use (sending video evidence) that might get that officiating crew reprimanded? It would be great to send that message after A close call instead of a ref aided loss.

sUCLA, USuC, mutts, and Oregon musta brought some of that "Crap-12" officiating east with them. What do we call the officiating now? "B1G Crap"?

Great post and comments.

On the other hand, the Back Judge in Indiana at Penn State was in the perfect position to make the TD call on the winning toe-tap catch.

Great comment by DM. I prefer refs letting things go over watching a flag fest.

B1G Policy - "Coach submission: Coaches can send plays with questionable calls to the Big Ten's coordinator of officials."

Coaches can also stay up on Christmas Eve to see if Santa shows up. 😁

Before last Saturday's game I suggested that one difference you would see would be the physical nature of Iowa DB's in covering receivers. They seem to body-up on receivers then dare the refs to call pass interference. Feeling, the refs won't call them all, so take the chance. Due to the weather, there were not a lot of passes thrown, especially into coverage, so that didn't really materialize.

I do believe they missed holding calls.

In both cases, I think there is a philosophy within conferences with an emphasis of what will be called, and what will be "let them play."

I believe we also saw it with Pac12 basketball which was more attuned to calling fouls (except in McKale Arena) in comparison to other conferences. I believe it hurt Pac12 teams when they got to the tournament to try to adapt to rougher play.