Second thoughts
referees when they scrimmage instead of an assistant coach or a manager. He likes it to be gamelike. He likes for the young guys to get a feel for what is going to be a foul at the SEC level.”
However, the Herald-Leader’s Jerry Tipton wondered what opposing SEC coaches thought of the arrangement.
“Since the SEC does not permit the three to work UK’s regular-season games, there’s no direct conflict of interest such as I’m-not-calling-a-foul-againstmy-Bahamas-benefactor,” Tipton wrote.
“But here’s a hypothetical: Say, Alabama and Kentucky are prime contenders to win the SEC regular-season championship. And the three officiate a late-season Alabama loss to, say, LSU that makes Kentucky the champion.
“Would that scenario be problematic?
“Yes,” former Auburn coach Sonny Smith said. “It would. Yes. Without a doubt.”
“John Clougherty, a longtime SEC referee and later supervisor of officials for the Atlantic Coast Conference, agreed.
“That’s a bad situation because if Alabama loses and finds out this guy had a paid vacation to the Bahamas, it’s going to raise eyebrows,” he said.
“Clougherty volunteered an alternative hypothetical. ‘If Kentucky lost and there was an official from Alabama that traveled with Alabama to the Bahamas,’ he said. ‘Knowing Cal, he’d have his suspicions.’ “
“Referees are so used to second-guessing, that questions about conflict of interest produce a shrug. ‘That’s a day at the beach,’ Rutledge said.
“For UK’s trip to the Bahamas, make that seven days at the beach.” unkind and incorrect things about Cam Newton in an interview with The Athletic, and we will get to those in a minute.
“But Benjamin got one thing exactly right. Speaking of his 31/2 seasons in Carolina, Benjamin said: “It was a bad fit from the get-go.”
“And you know what? He’s on the mark.
“It was a bad fit — for the Panthers.
“Benjamin’s alternate version of history neatly omits the most salient fact about his tenure with Carolina. The Panthers went 21-3 over the past four seasons when Benjamin was not on the field. They went 18-21-1 when he was.
“Do we need to go further than that? The Panthers were literally a better team when Benjamin — their first-round draft pick in 2014 — did not play. It was addition by subtraction, and it happened over and over. The Panthers almost had an undefeated regular season and went to the Super Bowl without No. 13 in 2015. They had a better second half of 2017 without him — the Panthers traded Benjamin to Buffalo halfway through the year — than they did with him.”