In the Cheez-It Citrus Bowl between Illinois and South Carolina there were some calls made by the officials that had a big impact on the game.
In particular, Illinois seemed to exploit late substitutions by South Carolina to grind down the play clock and put the Gamecocks in a bind. Coach Shane Beamer was asked if there was anything he could have done about it after the game.
“No. Look, I’m not like … we got our … we got beat,” Beamer said. “There’s some inconsistencies in how things are done from league to league. How some conferences interpret substitutions rules and how other conferences do it. Today was the Big 12. It’s a little bit different than what the SEC has been.
“We’ve had SEC officials all year and I think it’s up to each crew how they’re going to handle substitutions. Look, we do it too. If a team subs late in the play clock, we will sub and try and run the play clock down. It was happening a lot today and typically it’s if we sub a running back for a running back then that’s it. Or excuse me, if they were to sub a running back for a running back then we might get one guy in the game. But I’ll have to go back and watch the TV copy, but it seemed like there was a lot they sub, and then they sub again, and then they sub again. Which, again, they can get their people out there, it’s not me complaining, it’s just a little different.”
Those issues seemed to throw South Carolina off balance, and the Gamecocks had to burn a timeout at least once in the game as a result.
But there was another issue that Beamer pointed to when it came to how South Carolina was officiated. Something he felt was a little inconsistent.
“A big thing of what we do and a big thing of what they do is when the defense yells ‘Move’ on the line of scrimmage and you stem and move,” Beamer explained. “We did it on defense on the first drive of the game and we got called for delay of game on defense. And then late in the game when we were down there in the red zone, they did ‘Move’ and our guy jumped. But we got called for it. So it’s just the inconsistencies.”
Beamer made it clear that he wasn’t blaming the officiating for the team’s loss. Illinois simply made more plays than South Carolina throughout the course of the game.
Still, he wished things had been a little tighter from an officiating standpoint.
“And again, this isn’t Shane up here blaming the officials,” Beamer said. “I just don’t necessarily think it was anything with us. Could we have been cleaner with substitutions at times, absolutely. But there were some discrepancies in how that substitution is handled and something that I was really just trying to get an answer with. And even on the communication at the line of scrimmage, that’s something that I called.
“Because in the SEC we do it a little bit differently, the stemming and the moving at the line of scrimmage. And I called John McDaid, the head of the SEC officials, as soon as I found out it was going to be a Big 12 crew, because I said one thing they do is they make stems and verbal calls at the line of scrimmage as a defense, how’s it going to be officiated because every league kind of has their own interpretation of it as well. So it is what it is. That’s not why we lost the game, but it was just some inconsistencies that we had to battle.”
