Sports - Colleges - Mississippi State

Friday, Oct. 30, 2009

SEC stiffens penalties for complaining coaches

Punishments now include fines, supensions

By RALPH D. RUSSO

The Associated Press

NEW YORK — Publicly griping about officials in the Southeastern Conference just got a lot more costly for Lane Kiffin and the rest of the league’s coaches.

After three SEC coaches in two weeks, including Tennessee’s Kiffin, received reprimands for ripping officials, the conference has decided that future punishment for similar antics will be fines and suspensions.

A memorandum was sent by the league office on Friday to every school making them aware of the change, which is effective immediately.

Commissioner Mike Slive, in his eighth season with the conference, was given full discretion by the league’s athletic directors and presidents to hand out the punishment. He will determine the amount of fines and lengths of suspensions on a case-by-case basis.

“On rare occasions over the last seven years there were several private reprimands and that took care of the matter,” Slive told the AP in a telephone interview. “On occasion there were public reprimands and that took care of it. It became clear to me after last week that I was no longer interested in reprimands and the conference athletic directors and university presidents unanimously agreed.

“For the foreseeable future there will be no reprimands,” Slive added. “We will go right to suspensions and fines.”

The Big 12, Big Ten, Pac-10 and Mountain West conferences also use public reprimands, fines and suspensions as possible penalties for coaches who are publicly critical of officiating.

The SEC’s officiating, and public complaints by a few coaches about it, has drawn plenty of unwanted attention to Slive’s conference.

Last week, an SEC officiating crew was suspended after it called penalties the league said were not supported by video evidence in the LSU-Georgia game on Oct. 3 and the Arkansas-Florida game on Oct. 17.

The SEC publicly announced the suspensions, an unprecedented move by the conference.

Slive said that while he believes the SEC officiating has been good this season, the unusual circumstances with that one crew convinced him to go public with the punishment.

“It had to do with a very unusual confluence of events that we have not seen before and I doubt we will see again, in that we had two calls by a crew over a relatively short period of time that the video evidence did not support,” Slive said. “And one of the rules in play was the excessive celebration rule that has long been a subject of public debate.