Arkansas State head coach Butch Jones went viral on Saturday afternoon for his reaction to a botched called in his team's loss to Northern Illinois in the Camellia Bowl.
The Red Wolves recovered an onside kick late in the fourth quarter, while down by two points, but it was nullified after officials called an offside penalty on Arkansas State.
That botched called led to Jones losing his mind on the sideline (and costing his team a chance at getting the ball back by using a timeout).
After the game, Jones was asked about the bad call. And he revealed that the officials were never able to give him an explanation for the call, which he called "disturbing".
"There was none," said Jones when asked by a reporter what the explanation was from the officials. "That call didn't cost us the game. There [were] a lot of plays that we could've done where we wouldn't have been in that situation. But what you look for in an officiating crew is command of the moment. And when they're looking at you and they can't tell you what happened, as a coach, it's very disturbing. I'm just going by what everybody told me....you talk to any great official, and I've been in this game a long time, you never take the game out of the hands of the kids. You let the kids decide the game. If he was offsides then he was offsides. If he wasn't, if it was a bang-bang call, you let it play. That's what experienced, really good officiating crews do. This crew's obviously a good crew because they were here. So I can't say anything derogatory towards that."
Oddly enough, a similar situation happened to Jones in 2014 when he was the Tennessee Vols' head coach during a game against Missouri.
It's easy to understand why Jones was so angry. That's a game that he badly needed to win to secure his first winning season at Arkansas State. 7-6 with a bowl win to end the season is a lot easier to sell to recruits than 6-7 with a bowl game loss.
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