Greg Sankey defends SEC replay calls, won't commit to airing booth audio

The Tigers didn't wait long on Monday. AD Laird Veatch went public with the request first and added a letter to Mizzou fans.

The flashpoint was the late third-quarter play where Arch Manning lost the ball under pressure. Officials ruled it a fumble, Texas recovered it for a 14-yard gain, and it stood after review while Mizzou fans screamed incomplete forward pass. It wasn't the only one either. The replay crew also overturned 2 Missouri touchdowns and a Missouri catch that would have been a first down in the Texas red zone. Missouri lost 34-20 to the No. 8 team in the country.

Veatch was careful not to blame the result on the officials. The SEC's answer so far matches what it already said in public, so he went after the system instead. He wants replay booth conversations aired on broadcasts, which other conferences already do, and he said he and UM System President Mun Choi will push for it this offseason.

Then Greg Sankey went on The Paul Finebaum Show and didn't sound like someone giving an inch. "I am highly disappointed in announcers and their criticism. And they're wrong," the commissioner said. "Some of the worst officials in America are those in the announcing booth." ESPN's crew for the game was Joe Tessitore, Jesse Palmer and rules analyst Steve Shaw, and Palmer had plenty to say about the calls on air. Sankey also said he'd turned on a game Saturday and heard a broadcaster who was "just flat wrong."

He mixed in some mea culpa, too: "We're going to be wrong... we own it," plus a promise to work on transparency and access to the replay system. When it came to the thing Missouri actually asked for, though, he gave a scheduling answer.

Seven games at once is a pretty strange reason to keep the replay audio off the air. If the replay center can't keep up when it's busy, that's a much bigger problem than whether fans get to listen in. And "we've never said no" is doing a lot of work here.

So that's where it stands. Mizzou is 0-for-1 on getting anything new out of the league office, the commissioner is going after TV analysts, and the transparency fight moves to the SEC offseason meetings. That's where Veatch and Choi say they'll push for it. Until the SEC lets people hear the booth, every bad call like this one turns into Sankey vs. the guys in the booth.