Tennessee football: Five worst calls refs made against Vols at Alabama

SEC officiating looked bad Saturday as Tennessee football lost to the Alabama Crimson Tide. Here are the officials’ five worst calls against the Volunteers.

Lots of things went wrong for Tennessee football as the Vols lost to the Alabama Crimson Tide 35-13 Saturday night. Hey, they covered as 34.5-point underdogs, and it was a one-score game with less than five minutes to go in the game.

Alabama will say they didn’t get any breaks with the injury to Tua Tagovailoa, and a dropped Jauan Jennings pass that was intercepted combined with Jarrett Guarantano’s 4th and goal sneak that resulted in a fumble return touchdown were all on the Vols. But there’s no denying that they had no help from the officials.

Despite being in the top 50 as one of the fewest penalized teams in the nation, Tennessee football was flagged for 13 penalties, which resulted in 93 yards against them, for the game. And there were a couple of suspicious whistles and non-whistles that weren’t penalties but looked bad.

It was a bad day for SEC officials and the look of the conference. There was already a conspiracy, regardless of how true, that the SEC is trying to set Alabama and the LSU Tigers on a collision course for an undefeated November matchup. Saturday didn’t help quell that conspiracy. Jeremy Pruit got things going, calling out the refs at halftime.

If you think Vol Nation is alone in claiming that, they’re not. Notable mainstream media members also decided to note the poor officiating, including Joel Klatt, and of all people, Dan Wolken, whom UT had gone to Twitter war with for a year. It was a well-documented problem among anybody who was watching the game.

But what were these bad calls? How ugly did it look? Well, in this post, we’re going to break that down. These are the five worst calls that were at Tennessee football’s expense by the officials in the Vols’ loss to the Alabama Crimson Tide.