Big Ten referees will not call Penn State-SMU; which conference’s officials will?

Penn State and its College Football Playoff peers will not have officials from their own conference or that of their opponent at any point during the playing of games in the 12-team bracket. That means the No. 6 Nittany Lions’ clash with No. 11 SMU at Beaver Stadium in Round 1 will not feature crews from either the Big Ten or ACC. So, where will they come from?

Football Zebras, which has long covered the stripes side of the game, reports that a to-be-determined crew from the SEC will be in State College for the first of three Saturday CFP games two Saturday’s from now. It also reports that an SEC crew will call the quarterfinal featuring No. 3 Boise State at the Fiesta Bowl on Dec. 31. The winner of PSU-SMU advances to face the Broncos.

The last time an SEC crew came to Beaver Stadium led by James Carter cost the Lions an extra down erroneously.

Conferences rank their crews for the post season and submit those to the College Football Officiating organization. Its coordinator of officials then assigns crews based on any potential conflicts and other essential factors such as travel.

New this year, crews who perform the best during the first eight CFP games will advance to the semifinals and the finals. That mirrors how the FCS handles its assignments later in the postseason.

Penn State had plenty of gripes with Big Ten refs this year

Some were legitimate and some were not. But, there were certainly many instances of head coach James Franklin berating Big Ten referees for missed calls or questioning their decision making. Both took place during the Big Ten title game. The 11th-year leader of the Lions had gripes about clear holds that were missed and also thought a key play late in the game should have been handled differently.

“There was a couple calls that we didn’t get that I thought we should have,” Franklin said after losing to Oregon. “One of the calls that I thought was a critical point in the game was the two-minute drive with a catch on the sideline to Omari. I thought was a catch. And looking on the Jumbotron, it looked like it was a catch.

“I get you’re going to miss some calls, but it’s two minutes. So everybody says, okay, well, slow down so they can review the drive. It’s a 2-minute drive; we can’t slow down. In a critical game like that, in my opinion, they should have buzzed down and checked that.

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“We’ll watch the video of it. Maybe I’m wrong. But what I saw on the field and on the Jumbotron, that was a catch. And you can’t miss those calls in these types of games, especially when you’ve got replay. Just buzz down. It’s too important. So I thought we could have got a couple of those calls. There was a time late in the game where I thought they needed to protect Drew. Where he was hung up in a pile and kind of got slammed down late. There was another time where you’re not supposed to pull people off the pile.

“It is what it is, but the catch on the sideline, to me, that’s a critical moment in the game and it was close enough that it should have been buzzed down and at least reviewed. It is what it is. We’ll control the things that we can control. And then obviously that’s not one of them.

“I was being asked if you want to challenge it. In a 2-minute drive, it’s hard to do that. It’s hard to stop and burn a timeout when you need those timeouts at the end of the game. To me, that should be managed by them.