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It's not everyday that you get called out for being corrupt by some sore losers. Inept, ignorant, and shameful are more appropriate adjectives used to describe the officiating in the Big 12. Those words fit and, well, people have pretty much accepted them as one of the obstacles for winning the conference. However, as long as folks outside of the 40 Acres are not taking the claims of corruption seriously, we thought we'd go straight to the source and get the real story behind Big 12 officiating and the Texas Longhorns.
No one can tell you more about your opponent than those who hate them the most, so we invited @Big12Refs to have a little chat.
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CCM: I'm going to start off by putting you directly on the spot. Was the fix in on the Texas/Oklahoma State game? What was the payoff, from Mike Gundy, for the "corrupt" officiating crew that day?
@Big12Refs: It's tough being put on the spot. That's why reviews in football and basketball take so long. As for any "fix" that may or may not have happened: we can't comment directly, or at least that's what we think our lawyers (if we had lawyers) would tell us to say. Listen, Mike Gundy is a great guy. He's a terrible dancer, his hair is a running joke, and he's generally ill-tempered in press conference, but if you need someone to spot you $20 in a pinch, he will totally give you $5 and claim that's all he has in his wallet. We'd do pretty much anything for him.
CCM: Why do you guys hate Texas so much?
@Big12Refs: We don't hate Texas, or at least we didn't used to hate Texas. DeLoss Dodds was like a surrogate great-great-great grandfather to us. He was the best. But, since he left, it's been a complete mess. Our regular paychecks stopped showing up, we weren't invited to Lake Travis anymore. It just went way downhill, so we started looking around. The marriage had gotten stale, so our eyes wandered.
CCM: Was robbing Kansas State last weekend an attempt to deflect from the Texas scandal or do you guys hate the color purple as well?
@Big12Refs: As we're typing this, we're chewing on a Werther's Original that Bill Snyder gave us. What a guy. That's why it hurts that we "screwed up" like we did. So many people have said that "football is a game of inches" that we thought we might test that theory a little. Well, we tested it a little too much. Our calculations were off. Kind of like in Office Space where they misplace a decimal point. We're always getting the mundane details wrong.
CCM: Appropriately the Big 12 has been dubbed as having the worst officiating crews in the nation. Is that a badge of honor for you guys?
@Big12Refs: Absolutely. They hate us because they ain't us. Other conferences can talk, but if you look back in our family tree, you'll find the 5th Down Game. That's like looking back in your family tree and finding someone that signed the Declaration of Independence.
CCM: How often do you play golf with Bob Bowlsby and Walt Anderson?
@Big12Refs: Regularly. T. Boone has us out to his country club all the time. Walt Anderson is famous for dunking two or three balls in the lake on one hole and then declaring "MULLIGAN!" and asking us to put him down for a 4. Bob Bowlsby is famous for not being as cool as Dan Beebe.
CCM: Has Bob Stoops already paid up for this weekend and what kind of preview can you give us for the game's officiating?
@Big12Refs: We're not sure about Bob Stoops. Frankly, his brother scares us. No, not the successful one at Kentucky, the other one. If we had to choose between OU and Texas, it used to be an easy choice: Texas. But this season, it's a little different. For the officiating, we're sure to get a few targeting penalties wrong, you'll definitely see a sideline warning or two, and if we had to go out on a limb, we're guessing an inadvertent whistle will make people want to kill us. You know, standard stuff. As for the game, our prediction is that it's a close game right up until the point OU wins by 50.
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If you're not following @Big12Refs on Twitter then you're lacking in the sense of humor department.