Big 12 coordinator of officials Walt Anderson talks more about the controversial ending to last season’s Oklahoma State-Central Michigan game.

FRISCO, TEXAS — For more than a decade, Walt Anderson has served as the Big 12’s coordinator of officials. He also serves as an NFL referee and has found himself in the middle of controversy in both roles.

Tuesday at Big 12 Media Days at the Ford Center at The Star, Anderson gave his annual presentation on rules changes and points of emphasis. A large part of the question and answer session, though, focused on the ending of the Oklahoma State-Central Michigan game last year where the Chippewas completed a Hail Mary on an untimed down after the game should have ended the play before.

On his first question about the incident, Anderson responded with, “All good questions, yes, and all at times painfully felt and experienced.”

Q: Would the new replay command center have stopped action during the OSU-Central Michigan finish last year?

A: “It’s been a big gray area. In that situation, a lot of people across the country didn’t feel like we would have been right had we intervened. Last year, we felt like — right or wrong — we would have rather intervened and gotten that play right. It’s been a little more formalized this year with collaboration now being allowed, quote, on an experimental basis. But it’s sanctioned now by rule, that we want to make sure that — particularly in critical game-impact situation like that relative to things that are reviewable by rule or enforcements when you have a clear misapplication of the rule that’s being made, that those rise to the level of egregious, which is the phrase in the rule book that does allow the replay official to correct most anything that’s not specifically prohibited.”

Mike Gundy says he wishes he would’ve taken his shirt off and laid in the middle of the field to get the attention of the officials at the end of that game.

“It would’ve been flagged, but maybe it would’ve given somebody additional time to think, ‘Hey, is this that obscure rule where you can’t extend it?’ It’s a basic principal in college football if you have an enforced penalty you have to extend the period. The only exception, it’s in just one little part of one sentence in the rule book — the only exception is if it happened to involve the loss of down and it’s so rare. ... There were a lot of people around on that day that said, ‘Naw, that’s not a rule.’ It’s just so obscure. But it did happen and it certainly underscored the fact of, hey even if one person has an opportunity to step up and say, ‘Hey, hang on a second, timeout, let’s talk about this a bit, let me get my darn book out and see.’”

Did you instantly know that was the wrong call?

“Oh no. It took me more than a second. I had to think about it. ‘Wait a minute here, I’m trying to get now into Rule 6, part of the rule that it talks about extending. I don’t think it’s there. Hey, it may be somewhere else that deals with intentional grounding. I think that might be an exception. I don’t know whether we should be extending this play or not.’ That’s kind of how the conversation goes.”

How was Bob Stoops to deal with?

“Excellent. Bob would occasionally get animated, but I probably answered more questions from Bob Stoops than anybody. They were rarely about calls that he knew were bad calls. He was such a student. Bob was an excellent student of the rules. He’d contact me all the time — ’Hey Walt, I saw this play. I’m going to have my video guy send it to you because I need to know is this legal or is it not because I’m thinking about maybe putting it in?’ Or, ‘I’m going to send you a couple of plays from practice yesterday in terms of just actions by players, would these be enough for fouls?’ He was really good about studying holding — what can you get away with. Coaches like that, there’s probably a reason they’re successful because they’re doing those kinds of things rather than just not knowing the rules and just arguing about it from the sidelines. He was emotional on the sidelines. He even said, ‘Hey, sometimes I go too far.’ He was really good to work with. I’m going to miss Coach Stoops.”