Refs

quote:

---

Former NFL Ref Defends Calls

Arkansas native Walt Coleman has been around the block plenty of times.

Before retiring in 2018, the Little Rock product was an NFL official for two decades. He called games in college and high school before that.

Considering he’s a frequent guest on 103.7 The Buzz, it was only natural that Coleman appeared on Morning Mayhem to give his take on what unfolded against Mississippi State.

Everyone listening, including co-host and former Arkansas team captain David Bazzel, was looking for validation. Instead, the 73-year-old dumped a bucket of water on the flames.

“I watched the game and fortunately with TV, they have replays and go back and show what the fouls were,” Coleman said. “And I don’t really have a problem with any of the fouls that they called against Arkansas.”

He added that all four holding penalties against the Razorbacks looked like solid calls and that they seemed to lose their composure down the stretch.

It started after Arkansas’ two-point conversion that put it up 28-14 with 6:18 left in the third quarter. During a scuffle, someone left the Razorbacks’ bench, resulting in a 15-yard unsportsmanlike conduct penalty. That was the first of four penalties totaling 55 yards in the span of 21 seconds.

“I think we became undisciplined and out of control and created a problem for ourselves,” Coleman said. “Unfortunately, we are not a good enough team to overcome those type of things.”

An extra five yards would have been tacked on to that total, but the second of those flags came before the ensuing kickoff. The aforementioned penalty had already moved the kickoff from the 35 to the 20, so the unsportsmanlike conduct on Bobby Petrino was only half the distance to the goal — making it a 10-yard penalty instead of a 15-yarder.

While technical fouls on basketball coaches and ejections of baseball coaches are relatively common, it is exceedingly rare for football coaches to cross a line that warrants a flag. But that’s what happened Saturday:

“It looked to me like it was too long and too much and he just wouldn’t back off,” Coleman said. “He probably used a four-letter word or something. All officials have different personalities and some guys can take more than others. In this case, obviously the official thought it was too much and it was overboard.”

In Defense of Arkansas…

It’d be easy to write off Walt Coleman’s comments as an official defending officials, but he has been publicly critical of SEC refs in the past, including just last month:

---

Loading Twitter/X Embed...
If tweet fails to load, click here.