Tag: Tony Simeone

Social media reacts to face mask penalty leading to Louisville TD

Was this the right call?

Notre Dame has not looked good against Louisville, and the penalties certainly haven’t helped. One face-mask penalty wiped out a nice reception for [autotag]Mitchell Evans[/autotag]. However, Evans was able to get it back a few plays later, and it set up a 54-yard field goal for [autotag]Spencer Shrader[/autotag], tying his own program record.

But a late face-mask penalty by Marist Liufau on third down in a close game proved even more costly. With the Cardinals given new life, they continued to march down the field, and Jawhar Jordan ran 24 yards for a touchdown to put the Cardinals up, 24-13. Jordan also ran for a 45-yard score earlier in the second half.

Whether Liufau should have been whistled for the face mask is debatable, but what’s not is that it took the wind out of the Irish’s defense. Most Irish fans disagreed with the penalty as you’ll see from the following tweets:

Social media reacts to officiating during Notre Dame-Central Michigan

Never want to bash officials, but…

I have a personal philosophy of not bashing officials consistently during sporting events. Some fans do it until the cows come home. I just want to see how teams play and the results that come from that. Unless there’s a really egregious error by a game’s officials, I typically prefer to stay out of the bashing.

However, the first half of Notre Dame’s game against Central Michigan made it clear a subpar crew was assigned to the game. I’m not particularly concerned about the calls the officials have made, but they definitely have taken too long to make penalty calls, conduct replay reviews and even determine where the ball is. That slows the game. While more time watching football is good in theory, the increase in dead time makes it excruciating.

The first half took more than an hour and a half to play, and there is little doubt the officials influenced that. Here are some tweets that agree: