As Tennessee football faced the Alabama Crimson Tide, the Volunteers were “accidentally” whistled for having a trick formation.
Apparently, you’re not allowed to have a certain formation, even if it’s perfectly legal, if it will fool the Alabama Crimson Tide. Tennessee football was a victim of that on Saturday night in Tuscaloosa. Yes, they were guilty of calling a trick play that might fool Nick Saban.
Down 14-7 in the second quarter, the Vols were driving. They got it to 1st and goal. With Jarrett Guarantano in at quarterback, Jeremy Pruitt and Jim Chaney called a trick play in which Guarantano ran out into a receiver’s formation.
Immediately, the refs blew the a whistle. Then they re-spotted the Vols with the ball in the exact same spot and had them re-run the play. They got a false start and then failed to score a touchdown, leading to a field goal on that drive.
Jeremy Pruitt was livid and curious as to why the refs blew the whistle in the first place. It looked like an accidental whistle, as if they were about to signal a timeout, assuming the Tide had called one. But they didn’t, and Tennessee football just happened to be the victim of an officiating mistake that just happened to benefit Alabama.
This was an embarrassing look for the SEC. There’s already a running gag that the refs favor Alabama. Now, the data doesn’t fully show that, as heading into this game, the Tide were outside of the top 100 in terms of fewest penalty yards in the NCAA.
That would seem to hint that they aren’t getting a lot of love. However, there was no reason for that whistle to be blown there. And it resulted in Tennessee football cutting the score at the time to 14-10 instead of what could have been a tie game at 14.
These things can’t happen in the SEC. The Vols are already severely outmatched against schools like Alabama. There’s no reason to call an inadvertent whistle on them just because they had the Tide tricked on a play. Whatever happened there deserves an explanation. Regardless of what level each team is on, those mistakes are unacceptable.