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Orange Bowl and Cotton Bowl crews are set
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With the expanded playoffs this year, a new system of assigning officiating crews had to be devised. All bowl games have a restriction that the officiating crew can not be from the same conference as either of the participating schools. That made assigning semifinal games in advance impossible, because of all of the different combinations of outcomes.
Just as what is done in the playoffs for Division III, Division II, and the Football Championship Subdivision, playoff crews earn the right to advance to the later rounds based on performance, with the caveat that there won’t be conference conflicts.
All playoff games in the bowl subdivision are officiated by Power conference crews — ACC, Big Ten, Big 12, and SEC. Crews in the first round and the quarterfinal bowl games would be eligible for the Orange Bowl, Cotton Bowl, and the National Championship Game. All crews assignments are made in coordination with the College Football Playoff administration.
“That process has worked well,” national coordinator of officiating Steve Shaw said, referring to the FCS playoffs in a preseason memo. “I look forward to implementing this process for the CFP.”
The semifinal games have been assigned to crews out of the ACC for the Cotton Bowl and the Big 12 for the Orange Bowl. The ACC crew is headed by Round 1 (Tennessee-Ohio State) referee Jerry Magallanes, but the crew is split from that game and the one that worked the Rose Bowl. The Big 12 crew is the same as the Sugar Bowl crew, helmed by referee Michael Vandervelde. (A different alternate official was assigned, however.)
The crew for the National Championship Game has not been assigned — which was expected to be released now — and presumably will be finalized after the semifinal games. Presumably, since this is the first time this has been done, and not everyone we talked to is familiar with the process.
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Ben Austro is the editor and founder of Football Zebras and the author of So You Think You Know Football?: The Armchair Ref’s Guide to the Official Rules (on sale now)
Anonymous
January 3, 2025 at 9:12 pm
Why would they put the Big 12 crew on the Orange Bowl when they just did Notre Dame last week? Seems odd.
Jim
January 3, 2025 at 9:16 pm
Text of the article says Big 12 has Cotton and ACC has Orange, but the charts listing the crews has the opposite games.
Alex
January 3, 2025 at 10:22 pm
I would assume the reason for using the Big 12 on ND-PSU is that the SEC and Big Ten are first in line for the title game (SEC getting it if Texas loses, Big Ten getting it if both OSU and PSU lose). They wanted to ensure the Big 12 got a game (since it has no teams left) and thus it was the only option. But certainly odd that the same crew will have ND twice in a week.
Unpopular opinion, but why do we have to keep crews together by conference? Shaw’s big thing is “one CFO” and if all the leagues are using the same mechanics manual as they are supposed to, why can’t a crew contain officials from multiple leagues? Then all this nonsense about having “neutral” crews (a phenomenon that we know is unique to football only, if you follow the NCAA basketball tournament) can go away.
Of course, conference-specific officiating programs/oversight need to be eliminated period, but I suppose that’s a discussion for another day.
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