Ole Miss Softball: Poor officiating is killing SEC sports

This past weekend we watched as SEC officiating ran roughshod and took it out on Ole Miss softball killing any hope at a regular season SEC championship.

It really doesn’t matter whether or not you are a Ole Miss softball fan or not, I’m sure you have seen your share of bad officiating over this and past seasons. This past weekend the Rebels entered Athens with a SEC regular season championship in the back of their minds. Ole Miss would have had to sweep Georgia and get some help in the LSU/Bama series.

Unfortunately that didn’t happen with Georgia sweeping the Rebels in three-games with substantial help from SEC officiating in the first two games of the series. While nobody likes to blame losses on officiating it was very obvious there was a concerted effort to keep the Rebels from winning. Nobody likes seeing a great team being made part of a rail job either. The sad thing is it has been going on for years in the SEC and continues to get worse.

This Past Weekend

Ole Miss Rebels

This past weekend we watched as senior right-hander Brittany Finney was called for illegal pitch after illegal pitch. In fact she was called for illegal pitch 13, yes 13 times with nine calls coming in game-one. According to Maren Angus of Softball America, 6 of the illegal pitch calls were called while Allyssa DiCarlo, Georgia’s best hitter, was at the plate. 7 of the calls came on 2-strike counts.

Finney had only had 2 illegal pitches called in 17 starts with over 100 innings pitched. To see the work a great player puts in to be solid get hacked by SEC officiating is terrible. Finney is not a newb and is a solid arm in the circle for coach Mike Smith and the Rebels. This past weekend Finney was an obvious target for the SEC officiating crew which called the game.

There was also at least 5 Rebels batters who were called for hitting out of the batters box. If this isn’t bad enough even the announcers for the game mentioned they were terrible calls. Anybody can go back and watch and see there was an obvious intent and purpose to hurt Ole Miss softball at all costs.

Not Just Softball

The problem exists in every SEC sport. Over the years we have seen terrible calls in football, with a lot of calls falling in favor of the SEC darlings Alabama. This past season we watched as the officials made some terrible on the field calls although most were overturned by video review.

If you followed Ole Miss basketball in the 2018-19 season then you saw a number of poor calls made. We’ve also seen it in baseball this spring as well. However, I’ve never seen it as blatant as what I witnessed being done to Ole Miss softball this past weekend in Athens. There simply is no excuse for SEC officials to be biased towards specific teams and/or coaches.

SEC officials are supposed to be an integral part of the game and maintain a fair competitive balance for both teams. What we have seen from the SEC under Greg Sankey it has been anything but fair and balanced. Until the SEC makes some significant changes we will continue to see officials cater to certain teams and it is killing SEC sports. Hotty Toddy!