"Big 12 crew, in case you were wondering": A Scandurro Story

BY TIM SCANDURRO

We got screwed. GOOD.

“Honestly, one of the worst game-deciding calls I’ve ever seen.  Feel terrible for Tulane.”—Stewart Mandel, The Athletic.

“Big 12 crew, in case you were wondering.”—Jon Sumrall

One of my enduring Tulane football memories was my father telling me about the infamous “fifth down” officiating blunder that allowed the Miami Hurricanes to defeat Tulane in 1972.  He carried it with him all of his days, the earthly portion of which ended a year ago this week.  “Blunder” is my word, not his; my dad believed that an evil cabal of malevolent forces were always looking for any excuse to hose the Green Wave.

Many years later, he and I went up to West Point, a trip I’ve made four times and highly recommend.  But West Point, like Annapolis, is a place where my dad always felt the fix was in.  There was no way, he felt, that game officials would ever allow one of the service academies to lose a close game to us.    I spent a lot of time telling him that was ridiculous, until one night in Michie Stadium when it wasn’t.  That game featured a Hail Mary pass that an Army receiver caught with his foot out of the end zone but was ruled a touchdown, and one of the strangest calls I’ve ever seen.  Tulane had a tying field goal taken off the board when our holder was penalized for, according to the referee, “using a piece of linoleum” to mark the spot for our kicker.

As the years went on, my dad had many more opportunities to blame nefarious forces linked to money and power who were scheming against Tulane and the Saints.  Yet he also considered LSU to be the luckiest team on the planet, forever benefiting from various unlikely twists of fate to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat.  When I told him they too believed the world was against them, and that Alabama had rigged the SEC and its officiating, he scoffed. 

Such is diehard fandom.  Bad or unfair things that happen to other teams are either deserved or soon forgotten.   Bad or unfair things that happen to us are outrageous travesties that permanently stain the integrity of the game.

My dad would have hated the way the game Saturday against Kansas State ended, with a bad call robbing us of a tying touchdown.  If he carried that 1972 game for so long, I know this one would have lingered.  Which is why I was so intrigued with Jon Sumrall’s philosophy on adversity.  He says that when something bad happens and things go sideways, the team’s motto is to say “Good.”  Whether it’s a bad call or a bad break or a bad play, failure and disappointment doesn’t have to be permanent.  Instead, it needs to be seen as a blessing:  a gift through which we can show our resilience, our fight, our willingness to learn and get better, or even just our ability to move on to the next play. 

We instinctively understand this.  We know that failure, and not getting what you want or even what you deserve, is part of life as well as football.  Being able to persevere through that and turn it into a positive is something we try and teach our own children.  I am glad we have a football coach instilling that lesson in young men who will benefit their whole lives from learning it.

But it’s a lesson for tomorrow, for next week. For the future.  In the moment, this hurts and there’s no shame in saying it. This phantom penalty was not just unfair.  In today’s game, it might represent a swing of millions of dollars between us and our conference, and KSU and theirs.  It was not OK.  Which is why Coach Sumrall’s postgame message was so authentic to the human experience.  He knows how he will use this to fuel his team, but he also didn’t take it lying down.  He opened his press conference by pointing out that the officials left a lot to be desired and “were a Big 12 crew.”   So while I loved the message about resilience and refusing to wallow in our shared agony,  my dad would have loved the middle finger to the Big 12 and its officials.  Coach got the balance right.

Good.

-- By Tim Scandurro