SEC Ups Penalties for Complaining Coaches: This May Have Something to Do With Lane Kiffin

Coaches whining about penalties against their teams are fixtures at all levels of sports, but the SEC's officiating has been far enough beyond the pale to deserve a fair amount of that whining this season. But SEC commissioner Mike Slive has had enough of that dissent, thank you very much, and announced today that the conference's coaches will face "suspensions and fines" for future carping. The tone of the announcement points to a certain boyish rogue on Rocky Top as the guy whose transgressions have ruined the fun for everyone:

"On rare occasions over the last seven years there were several private reprimands and that took care of the matter," said Slive, in his eighth year as the SEC's leader. "On occasion there were public reprimands and that took care of it. It became clear to me after last week that I was no longer interested in reprimands and the conference athletic directors and university presidents unanimously agreed.

"For the foreseeable future there will be no reprimands," Slive added. "We will go right to suspensions and fines."

Disregarding the possibility that the SEC's refs have only now done things worth coaches' retorts, it would seem that some uptick in moaning and groaning from the guys with headsets this year is what prompted this fall of Slive's iron fist. 

The SEC added three new head coaches to its esteemed fraternity this season: Two, Mississippi State's Dan Mullen and Auburn's Gene Chizik, have been mostly benign, though Mullen did get scolded this week. The other one is the talkative dauphin of Knoxville.

So it's Lane Kiffin at the center of a controversy, as usual, and it's Kiffin's statement last week that probably pushed Slive over the edge. "I'm sure we'll get one of those letters that really means nothing as Bobby (Petrino) got last week, but Florida and Alabama live on," Kiffin said Sunday, possibly while scoffing and drawing a mustache on a portrait Slive. That sort of unbrooked cheekiness and disrespect of the authority of the man in charge cannot be abided, lest Kiffin make a mockery of the conference with conduct unbecoming an SEC head coach.

After all, it's really the coaches' perceptions of bias and/or inaccuracy in the officiating and vocal displeasure with it that's the problem here, and not the pattern of poor calls itself, right? Silence the complainants, and there can be no complaints, no matter how awful the officiating is!

The SEC really is almost as good as the NFL.

This post originally appeared on the Sporting Blog. For more, see The Sporting Blog Archives.