every coach needs to stop whining about the officiating. Referees have sucked forever. It’s a scientific fact. If coaches are going to go to the media first instead of the league office, then the league office is going to do the same. Can’t say I blame them.

Here’s a novel idea Mr. Slive: If you don’t want coaches to criticize officials, how about you just have officials do the job for which they’re hired. Problem fixed.

Gag orders for coaches is not a valid solution for a systematic problem. Easy fix? Sure. But it’ll ultimately undermine the credibility of the best league in the land.

Now he’s outta there on the first mention of the turkey’s dryness.

this quite rises to the level of a free speech issue.

Shutting down coaches is not going to have any impact on whether people think the referees messed up. We have TVs. We watch the games. We have the calls on replay, and ESPN is more than happy to show off the sketchy cally.

I’m all for a policy of aggressive restraint with officials; insinuations that a league is on the fix is the one thing that all sports leagues fear the most, and the weak link is a dirty official. So the league has to take care to protect the images of their officials (within reason). But to have the SEC commissioner forbid coaches from discussing publicly the exact same things that the SEC commissioner himself has discussed publicly is, at best, amateurish. One thing our society hates is hypocrisy, and that comes off like it.

The tighter the rules, the blander the responses. You know that journos are going to ask coaches about officiating, and that coaches will decline to respond. That’ll account for 10-20% of postgames for a while (depending on how long the postgames last), and we already know the script.