A Few Insights From an ACC Ref

A few weeks ago, my job took me to Florida for a few days. Part of the trip involved spending time with a client's head of sales. It turned out that on weekends in the fall he is a head line judge for the ACC.

Over the two days I asked him numerous questions, but here are a few highlights I thought I would share:

• He has been reffing in the ACC for 8 years. He has done one of our games each year, but hasn't gotten to travel to Lane since his first year. He had nothing but praise for the environment in Blacksburg.
• He loves our coaching staff. Thinks we have one of the best he's come across, at least from what he gets to see and experience on gameday.
• He could not say enough bad things about Bobby Petrino and his staff (no surprise there).
• He said it seemed like Beamer wasn't really coaching the team the last 2-3 years. It was primarily Bud.
• I was a little surprised to hear him say he likes Bud. It seems like I can remember Bud getting in a ref's ear more than once or twice. But he said Bud is always respectful and only really gets fired up for defensive PI calls.
• The only negative thing he had to say about our staff was about Shane. He remembered Shane losing it and repeatedly screaming at him over a call at the end of a game at Pitt where we were getting blown out. He said we were down 3 scores with less than a minute left when the play happened, and replay showed that Shane was wrong (according to this ref at least).
• I forgot to ask about Narduzzi. Not sure how... but he didn't volunteer him as a bad guy like he did Petrino.

More generally I asked him about why does the line judge run into the pile on goal line plays and take so long to make a call. This has always seemed so arbitrary of a call to me, because the play has already happened and the ball carrier can be moving long after being down.

He said the ACC has a philosophy that the refs are supposed to call by.

They run in to find the ball. If the ball carrier is lying with his shoulders on/over the goal line, the call is based on where he is holding the ball. If he is holding it in his gut, they assume he got in and call a TD. If he has the ball out-stretched, they assume he extended it after hitting the ground and call them down inside the 1 yard-line. He said either way they don't stress because the play will be reviewed.

He also was pissed at Bronco for not having a spring game, because he couldn't work it himself or send any local guys to work it.

Anyways, I thought it was cool to hear some thoughts about our program from someone who's gotten close, but isn't a fan or alum, and wanted to share.