Referees will miss calls from time to time; they are human, but when a play is clearly dirty and unnecessary, there simply has to be some enforcement. One play from Kentucky's loss to Tennessee on Saturday fit this bill. It was a play in which Brock Vandagriff ran out of bounds and was pushed over by a Tennessee player standing along the sidelines.
Refs may have missed it, but the SEC should do something this week. This is clearly blatant. pic.twitter.com/SAtjaAnq6Z
— Wildcat Blue Nation (@WildcatBlueNatn) November 3, 2024
The call was missed on the field at the time, even though the referee was standing right there. Fans were calling for Mark Stoops to send this to the SEC for review. There should be a fine or some sort of precedent set so this can't happen again. If the conference wants to protect its quarterbacks, which it does, then it needs to make sure this doesn't happen again.
Kentucky head coach Mark Stoops said this week that he sent the play into the SEC and, as he usually does, was cagey about their reply. He said there is no place in the sport for those sorts of things and implied that the SEC needs to do something about it.
Stoops says this should never happen at any point in any game.
If you are curious about what the SEC has done or will do about it or even what their reply is, good luck figuring that out. Even Stoops said, "I can’t even tell you what was said or the information that I got back. I’ll just say, in general, not about that player but in general, there is no place for anybody striking anybody in the head at any place. Before, after, during, anytime during a game.”
A flag should have been thrown, and a 15-yard penalty should have been assessed for unsportsmanlike conduct. Now, as Stoops said, the hope is simply that there is "no place" for it in future games.