CFB analyst calls for complete overhaul of officiating system

On The Joel Klatt Show, he expanded on his tweet, calling college football officiating “broken.”

“We really need to fix it and—maybe more importantly or specifically—replay is broken,” he said.

Klatt believes replay failed to correctly call targeting penalties in both College Football Playoff semifinals Saturday. 

He also believes replay should not have overturned Michigan’s touchdown early in the second quarter. All three calls, according to Klatt, had a profound impact on the outcome of the games.

If targeting were called late in the fourth quarter of TCU’s win, Michigan would have had a first down on its own 40-yard line with 25 seconds remaining. Instead, TCU kneeled on the next play, sealing the win.

The play after the overturned touchdown pass, TCU recovered a Michigan fumble in the end zone for a touchback, allowing the Horned Frogs to maintain a 14-3 lead.

In Georgia’s win over Ohio State, the Buckeyes settled for a field goal in the third quarter after what Klatt believes was a blown targeting call on WR Marvin Harrison Jr. After the brutal hit, OSU’s top receiving option missed the remainder of the game.

Klatt, of course, was not the lone media critic.

The solutions to college football officiating problems, according to Klatt, are fairly simple: Do away with conference affiliations, eliminate the “illusion of bias,” and take subjectivity out of the targeting call.

Klatt harps on conference affiliations because they tend to lead to inconsistency in how rules are applied. Rules and roles are emphasized and defined differently from conference to conference.

In Klatt’s ideal system, on-field officiating and replay would be centralized nationally for consistency.

“No one conference should have their officials,” he said. “It should be a national officiating base.”

Of course, Klatt’s proposed changes would not end criticism of officiating, but they would solve many key issues plaguing college football.