Arkansas Sports 360 - ArkansasSports360.com

7/27/2011 at 2:10pm

When it comes to coaching hot seats, Georgia’s Mark Richt has been regarded among the Southeastern Conference media as sitting on the hottest.

But the seat with the most fire might be the one now occupied by Steve Shaw.

Not that friendly, easy-going Shaw will lose his job or anything; he just took his new gig as the SEC’s coordinator of officials. But let’s just say that if everything goes smoothly with SEC football officiating this year – fat chance, right? – Shaw’s phone will likely never ring.

When the calls invariably come in, late Saturday night, Sunday after a controversial game, or first thing Monday morning from an athletic director stepping is an intermediary between his irate coach and the head of officials, they can’t be pretty.

Shaw quit his day job and gave up his weekend stripes to take a full-time position with the SEC during the off-season, and he addressed the league’s media last week in Hoover, Ala., with rules changes and the way he plans to approach the job with the various teams of officials this fall. Shaw replaced Rogers Redding, who was a longtime official in the long-gone Southwest Conference before moving over to the SEC and moving into the desk job as the SEC’s sixth coordinator of football officials.

Arkansas Razorback fans might have forgotten, but Shaw was the referee in last year’s game in Little Rock with LSU, its last minute marred by a strange on-field decision that let the Tigers get one last opportunity to get the ball back. How Shaw didn’t flag Arkansas Coach Bobby Petrino or the Hog sideline for the ensuing tirade is anyone’s guess. Petrino said in his post-game press conference that he never got an answer from Shaw as to why he stopped the clock with 54 seconds left and didn’t restart it after putting the ball into play.

LSU was out of timeouts. Arkansas running back Knile Davis was slow to get up after a second-down carry on the LSU end of the field. So, with Davis not getting up quickly, Shaw signaled timeout. It never restarted until the next snap of the ball, and Arkansas ended up having to punt when there appeared no way the clock would have allowed enough time for that.

And, of course, LSU could have blocked that punt and maybe, miraculously sent the game into overtime, not that anyone should think the officials would have been considering such a scenario. The Hogs downed the punt on the LSU 3 and Jordan Jefferson fumbled on the next play, and this time the clock did run out for a 31-23 win that sent the Hogs, instead of LSU, to the Sugar Bowl.

Aside from that strange moment, one that wouldn’t have happened if Davis had been able to get up off the ball and off the field quickly, everyone should realize that Steve Shaw has been considered the best referee in the conference for several years.

By moving him into the office to oversee the entire roster of officials, the SEC is taking their best ref off the field. No pressure on the other guys.

“I thought I had a few good years left on the field,” he said in Hoover. “When this job came open, this is what I had always wanted to do.

“I think my desire is really to take my on-field experiences and the talent within our officiating staff and really make these guys the best they can be. I'm not interested in us just being good; I want us to be absolutely the best we can be on every play, and that's our goal. “

Shaw last week went through a litany of changes the league will implement, as well as the new NCAA rules that further curtail celebrations.

What he didn’t say -- and he didn’t field any questions in Hoover -- was whether the league would better coordinate it’s replays for the replay official with what CBS broadcasts to the entire nation.

We saw how badly the system last year worked when the replay official at the Auburn-Arkansas game was apparently the only man in the U.S. to not see any view where Auburn’s Mario Fannin lost the football before he crossed the goal line in the second quarter of the Tigers’ eventual 65-43 win, a big hurdled jumped on the way to their perfect season and national championship. There was also the bang-bang fumble call on Broderick Green in the fourth quarter that allowed Auburn to move 8 points ahead and for Arkansas to start winging it into pass coverage for interceptions that sealed the deal.

Shaw said the league coaches this year will now be able to have the CBS feed in the press box coaches’ booths, so we’ve got to think that also means the replay official will be getting every angle available. Lord knows CBS in its wonderful SEC coverage gives the fans every angle, even from the blimp or overhead camera above.

Meanwhile, coaches all around the country will be warning their ego-driven stars that excessive taunting now will be more than just a 15-yard penalty after the touchdown: The touchdown will be wiped out and the penalty enforced at the spot where the taunting was cited by the official.

Of course, that puts the onus on the official to distinguish taunting from, say, a tic the receiver might have as he approaches the goal line.

Those leaps into the end zone where no defender is near also will result in no score and a penalty at the point of the jump. Again, when there is a defender is involved, an official might have to use his best judgment.

When rule changes have been instituted in the pass, such as the celebration penalties of recent years, SEC officials seem to have gone over and beyond. To wit, recall Alabama’s chance to beat Arkansas in overtime in 2003 wiped out by a supposed celebration penalty after a Hog turnover that forced an impossibly long field goal. Arkansas won the game in the second OT.

We’re sure that when it comes to blown calls that actually helped Arkansas, most Razorback fans have forgotten that one.

Shaw’s biggest charge is making sure SEC officiating begins to measure up to the play on the field. The league doesn’t need the kind of shoddy officiating it’s seen the past two seasons that helped league leaders stay undefeated (e.g. Florida in 2009, Auburn last year), leading the rest of the country to cry foul.

Whether it was merely accidental or simply bad judgment, it makes a suspicious, anti-SEC crowd that much more suspicious.

Officiating, like field-goal kicking and baseball pitching closer, is a thankless job. The best officials are the ones you barely notice in a game. But the most thankless job belongs to Shaw. His guys have to be perfect in an imperfect business. If he does his job right, his phone will never ring.

Email: jharris@abpg.com. Also follow Jim on Twitter @jimharris360

Tagged: Mario Fannin, Broderick Green, Auburn Tigers, Allstate Sugar Bowl, LSU Tigers, Bobby Petrino, Southeastern Conference, 2011 SEC Media Days, Steve Shaw