Even after officiating football for 33 years and serving another 11 years as an observer of officials for the Southeastern Conference, there are often calls and non-calls made by officials that leave me guessing.

The errors I noticed mostly this past weekend involved badly missed forward progress spots, some of which might have had a direct impact on the outcome of the game.

In the Thursday night game between Southern Mississippi and TCU, badly missed spots early in the game seemed to go in TCU’s favor.

Since Southern Miss won the game and the statistics show that TCU was penalized much more often than USM, the questions are moot.

Another ruling by an official in the same game sent me to the rule book to clarify a call made during TCU’s second successful on-side&uot; kick.

TCU executed a pooch kick, a short but high kick designed to allow a kicking team member to race down field and catch or recover the ball before a receiving team member can get to it.

A TCU player actually caught the kick before it touched the ground, and seemed to prohibit a USM player from making a catch. I’ll quote the rule and let the fan be the judge.

NCAA College Football Rule 6, Section 4, Article 1 states: &uot;A player of the receiving team between the boundary lines attempting to catch a kick, and so located where he could have caught a free kick or scrimmage kick that is beyond the neutral zone, must be given an unimpeded opportunity to catch the kick.&uot; Article 1c adds &uot;….when in question, it is an interference foul.&uot;

The call came at a crucial time in what was probably the most important Conference USA game ever.

A TCU win could have helped TCU secure a BCS Bowl bid worth about $13.5 million. The split among C-USA teams would mean plenty to most of those schools’ athletic budgets.

I’ll never understand why fellows who regularly broadcast college football games never seem to make an effort to learn the rules.

Until he was corrected by his colleagues, one of the Ole Miss radio announcers for the LSU game insisted an Ole Miss punt was ruled a touchback because the UM player downing the ball had his toes over the goal line.

In college football the ball itself is all that has to break the plane of the goal line. The official’s call was correct because the ball had broken the plane before the Ole Miss player gained possession of it.

While the game of golf is often called a game of inches (mostly the six inches between a player’s ears) football games often hinge on an inch here and an inch there. An example is from the Ole Miss-LSU game.

In the second quarter Eli Manning completed a pass to Chris Collins for what would have been a 77-yard gain to the LSU 3, but Collins was ruled to have stepped on an inch of the sideline at the LSU 49 instead.

The covering official had a perfect view of the play, and there was little doubt about the call. But that surely was a big inch as the game ended, wasn’t it?

And that’s official.

Al Graning is a former SEC official and former Natchez resident. He can be reached at

AlanWard39157@aol.com.