Big Ten making notable change for upcoming football season

The Big Ten is about to join the rest of the Power Five conferences in one regard.

They are expected to have a centralized replay center available for the 2023 football season. A centralized replay center would allow in-game officials to communicate with a command center regarding replay reviews during games.

Purdue AD Mike Bobinski told On3’s Tom Dienhart that work is being done on a site from where officials will be able to conduct reviews this fall.

“Our intention is to move towards a centralized replay situation,” said Bobinski. “Its time has come here, in our opinion. There still will be someone on site and a set of eyes looking at replay, but there’ll be that collaboration between the command center and the on-field official.”

There are plans for the command center to be located in Chicago. They may work from an alternate site this fall, though.

Why didn’t the Big Ten previously have a command center to help with reviews? Previous commissioner Jim Delaney, who served in the role until 2020, was concerned about favoritism (depending on who was running the command center).

Calls are always going to upset one school and make the other happy, but at least the command center should help the conference improve their rulings on big plays.