The SEC Forum at College Football Fan Site, CFB51!!!

. . . I'm reminded of the British journalist from WW2 stationed in Germany--I forget his name at the moment.  He had access to London papers, American papers, news sources from all over the place, due to his profession and outsider status, and he was very well aware of the wider scope of information.  Yet he noted later that though he knew better than the average German citizen, he said he was shocked to find how much doubt the constant drip of Nazi propaganda created in him.  He would later write about the effectiveness of constant messaging, even on those who knew they were being gaslit. . . .

I posit something similar is often going on here.  If you live in a space where LSU DBs are always getting drafted in the 1st round for years and making genuinely great plays every game, there can come a point where you're not consciously trying to tip the scales in their favor, but you fail to side against them in close calls that you'd probably ding another DB group for, because, after all, these guys are widely known to be great, they routinely make those perfect plays where they get there at exactly the right time to break up the pass.  Or Alabama's OL is always so great without holding that it's harder to catch when they actually do it, because after all, those guys don't need to hold to play great.  Insert whatever applies to UGA here, you get the idea.

nerds

Good grief, I think you're right.  I believe that's the name I was searching for.  How did I contort an American radio correspondent into a British journalist?

Yah! The scenario there is that UGA had the play clock running down on a critical 3rd down in the red zone. As the clock hit 3-2-1 he's clearly and obviously frantically calling time out right in the ref's ear with every fiber of his being.

Of course, the clock is stopped, his time out gets granted. Then, he's saying he was only clapping along with his QB and not calling time out.

Well, obvious mistake by the ref. All we can do is reset the play clock to 25 seconds and try again.

In my true logical mind, I know officiating is a rough job, and that they're almost always doing their level best to be impartial. Two years in, though, it sure seems like Kirby Smart is always in the middle of the odd decisions, and they all seem to go his way.