Referee stands behind Benny Snell's ejection

The referee who disqualified Benny Snell was made available to the media afterwards and stood behind his call.

“The player got up and grabbed my arms and pushed them away and contacted me,” The ref said, via Adam Sparks of the Tennessean. “That’s a foul.”

The official insisted the contact with Snell was intentional, not incidental, but said Snell DID NOT say anything to him that would have warranted an ejection. My gosh.

Mark Stoops told reporters that he didn’t see the interaction between Snell and the official, so he couldn’t comment on it.

“I really didn’t see it at all,” Stoops said. “The official told me that Benny grabbed him and shoved him. If Benny grabbed him and shoved him, then he deserved to be ejected. I don’t know.”

As you can see, Benny did not grab the ref and shove him:

Stephen Johnson also didn’t see it.

“I really didn’t see much. I was just looking for the play and all of a sudden, I see a flag in the air. Like Caoch Stoops said, somebody told me he grabbed him and shoved the ref, but whether that’s true or not, I didn’t see it.”

On the radio, Stoops relayed what Snell told him happened.

“What [the official] told me is that Benny shoved him. Physically shoved him and he had to call it. What Benny told me, ‘I got up and it was like any play. I rolled over and got up.'”

Meanwhile, Stoops was much more upset with what happened when Stephen Johnson was hit out of bounds, which took him out of the game.

“I don’t want anyone saying I’m crying over officiating. I was just upset that the procedure during that sequence was so jacked up. I had a quarterback injured four feet from the field and the clock was winding. I was contemplating going for it there and I have my quarterback lying on the ground and Drew wasn’t even warmed up.”

“It’s just not safe. You have a guy four feet out of bounds laying there severely hurt. I was looked at like I had three heads and they didn’t care or whatever. This was my fault, I had the official come look and see that he’s hurt and one of my guys [Kendall Randolph] said something.”

Unfortunately, officiating will overshadow a gritty performance by Kentucky tonight, and that’s a damn shame.

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