‘Just making up rules as they go’: FOX broadcast crushes Big 12 referees

The BYU Cougars suffered a shocking defeat to the UCF Knights last weekend and looked to bounce back against the Arizona State Sun Devils on Saturday. The Cougars got some help in the form of questionable officiating.

Early in the game, the Cougars fumbled on the goal line, subsequently recovered the ball, and then advanced it for a touchdown. Although the officials said that the play had been stopped for forward progress, after two video reviews, a touchdown was awarded.

The FOX broadcast crew of Connor Onion, Robert Griffin III, and rules analyst Mike Pereira couldn’t believe what they had just witnessed.

“This is not the type of situation that you have when the runner steps out of bounds where you can give him continuing action,” Pereira said. “This was a player that recovered the ball and got up in the field of play. The ruling on the field was the runner was down initially, and if that’s the case, you’ve ruled it dead. You can give a recovery, but you can’t give an advance unless we’ve come up with a new rule here, which I’m not, I’m not too sure that you can really do…

“This is getting kind of frustrating, you know, week to week,” Pereira added. “You know, we shouldn’t have these situations, you know, that we come up and then we have further explanation as the week, you know, wears on. But the fact is, Kenny’s right. Kenny is right. They killed the play. You can forget about when the whistle happened. killed the play in the field of play and the ball was out. Give the recovery but not the advance.”

Crazy https://t.co/B7aHAJnIS6

— Next Impulse Sports (@NextImpulse) October 31, 2026

Griffin went as far as to say Big 12 referees were just making things up week to week.

“This is 3 weeks in a row where we’ve had Big 12 officials just making up rules as they go,” he said. “This is crazy, man.”

If Griffin gets his way, he could be dealing with these same officials as a coach rather than an analyst. He recently said that he “would 100 percent be interested” in becoming the head coach of the program, where he won the Heisman Trophy during his playign days, despite having zero coaching experience. IT goes without saying that it would be a massive leap to go from the broadcast booth straight to a Power Four sideline, but it’s hard to imagine him doing a worse job than the Big 12 officials are doing at the moment.

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