The SWAC conference office has reprimanded Grambling head football coach Rod Broadway for criticizing officiating in the Tigers Oct. 10 game against Alabama A&M. In case you were wondering about what he actually said…
“We had one touchdown called back on a bogus call,” he said. “We had another one that hit a guy in the leg. There were four calls that were touchdown-saving calls — which is, you know, unheard of in this day and time. You can see one of those calls during the course of a game. But to have four calls during the course of a game that saves touchdowns? One was a fumble on the quarterback when we hit him. One was a punt that hit the guy on the leg and we scooped it up. The other one was a touchdown run. There were some calls, you know, that I thought were bogus, to say the least. But our kids kept playing. They played right through that.”
I can understand why the conference doesn’t want their officials publicly berated by a well-known coach, because it enhances an already-strong perception that black college football officiating is poor.
But it’s strange; the game was at Grambling, and of the nine penalties called in what eventually morphed into a 21-point blowout favoring the Tigers, six of them went against the Bulldogs. Maybe Broadway was just warming up for big games against UAPB and Southern in the Bayou Classic.
