Saturday night’s officiating debacle in Charlottesville couldn’t have come at a worse time for the ACC. Its own coaches have spent the past month questioning the credibility of their own officials, rightly or wrongly, to the point where commissioner Jim Phillips had to send out a memo to coaches and athletic directors this week telling them to shut up about it.
When three veteran officials botched the end of the Duke-Virginia game, not by a missed judgment call but by what the league later acknowledged was a basic misapplication of the rulebook — a cardinal sin! — it gave credence to all those complaints. The ACC took the nearly unprecedented step of issuing a public statement of error late Saturday night, but it may be too late to slow the narrative that’s gathered steam.
The reality is this: ACC officiating isn’t any worse than it is anywhere else, and it’s as good as it is anywhere else in the Power 5. Look no further than what’s happened on Monday nights when the ACC brings in some of the best officials who usually work in the Big 12 and SEC. Kyle Filipowski, denied the potential game-winning free throws Saturday, was also punched in the throat at Virginia Tech on a Monday without penalty when a foul might have changed the outcome of that game — another Duke loss. Two of those officials were in New Orleans last April.
