Neal Brown calls out inconsistency in officiating

West Virginia Mountaineers head coach Neal Brown hasn’t been afraid to speak his mind. That, recently, included calling out officiating for its inconsistency during West Virginia games.

Coming off West Virginia’s close win over Arizona and going into the Mountaineers’ bye week, Brown met with the media for a press conference. There, he explained why he’s concerned about the consistency in officiating.

“My thing with officiating is I just think it needs to be consistent,” Neal Brown said. “So, the one I just talked about on the speed sweep, it was borderline whether [C.J.] Cole held or not on that first down, but they had a fourth down conversion where they handed off a speed sweep and they had every bit the same hold that we had and it wasn’t called. So, to me, we just got to be consistent in how we’re gonna call the game.”

In West Virginia’s win over Arizona, the Mountaineers were called for seven penalties for 48 yards while the Wildcats were called for five penalties for 30 yards. That’s not a major difference, but Brown did feel strongly that the judgment call penalties need to be called the same throughout the game.

“The procedure penalties that were on our o-line, they were both kind of unique in the sense they were really on the center. They called them on somebody else but they’re really on the center not snapping the ball,” Brown said.

“Then, the holds I wouldn’t necessarily argue. Holding and DPI are so hard because they’re judgment calls, right? I don’t know if we’re consistent enough throughout, but I can’t argue that those weren’t holds. They probably were, but we haven’t had a huge penalty issue with our offensive line but they hurt us. The penalties hurt us. We had 50 yards and they were all on our offensive line.”

This season, West Virginia is sixth in the country in penalties, only getting called for 4.6 penalties for 34.4 yards per game this season.

For Neal Brown, this wasn’t the first time this season he’s had his frustrations with the officiating. Following West Virginia’s loss to Iowa State, he called out the officiating for what he felt were mistakes in how the secondary was officiated.

“I thought the non-interception call when we threw the first pick and I thought the defensive holding call, which to me the ball was not even close,” Brown said. “It was a give up throw. He threw it away and I don’t know. All I know is we were the least penalized team coming in in the country, yards per game, I believe… and they had one penalty and we had seven.”

West Virginia is now 4-4 on the season and 3-2 in the Big 12. In the final month of the season, as the Mountaineers fight for a bowl game, it will be interesting to see how Neal Brown handles officiating moving forward.