Mike Slive's faux accountability

At the risk of belaboring the whine-a-thon regarding the LSU game, Mike Slive invites some discussion when he says the SEC has an accountability system for officials and if somebody is not good enough they won't stay. Slive's "just never felt that a public hanging in the square" will make better officials.

That accountability system must really be effective if Al "Jasper was down!" Ford is still around. He was the replay official for the LSU game Saturday and the poster child for the fact the SEC does not run a meritocracy with respect to officials.

Bobby Gaston, right, selects his successor.

The problem with Slive's comment is that no one knows anything about the accountability system. And if there is an accountability system, shouldn't the conference talk with specificity about how it operates in order to inspire the kind of confidence Slive was trying to create?

I think such a discussion is important to the integrity of the game. The system for hiring, firing, and evaluating Southeastern Conference officials lacks transparency. It's precisely this veil of secrecy that permits conspiracy theories to take hold. It's easy to believe the SEC Supervisor of Officials is a patronage position for farted-out old Tech ankle biters when only Total Assholes Persons like Bobby Gaston and Rogers Redding have ever held the job, and no one quite knows what they do. Was that job opportunity even posted, or a successor merely annointed?

I would like to see the SEC talk about how it selects officials (are there fitness & vision requirements? How are they enforced?), what kind of training is required, the rate at which officials are involuntarily "retired" and other related facts. The LSU game merely brought these kinds of questions into focus for me, and Slive's bobbing and weaving on the issue only makes it look worse.