College Sports Wire is checking in on all the latest news from around the world of college athletics on Friday. We begin with four conferences uniting to form an officiating alliance.
On Thursday, the Big 12, alongside the American Athletic Conference, Mountainwest Conference, and Southland Conference, announced a “football officiating alliance.”
According to the brief press release from the Big 12,
“Over 300 officials will be under the alliance’s umbrella, ensuring consistent training, evaluation and grading processes across the conferences. The alliance conferences will use this pipeline to develop a “bench” of officials that have been trained and evaluated under consistent philosophies and mechanics.
Each conference will have its own coordinator of officials to manage their respective officiating programs, with the alliance overseen by Big 12 Coordinator of Officials, Greg Burks.”
The alliance comes at a time when finding officials has become difficult for some college football programs. The Big 12 faced several issues regarding officials over the last several years, while the Pac-12 is also facing its own challenges after seeing multiple officials leave the conference this offseason.
Beyond the announcement of the officiating alliance, today’s ‘College Sports Roundup’ looks at the still murky future of San Diego State’s conference allegiance, a suspension of a prominent Power Five head, and more.