FAYETTEVILLE -- No, the absent third official at Saturday night's Arkansas Razorbacks vs. Ole Miss Rebels SEC game at Walton Arena wasn't working the game with the Walton absent ESPNU announcers in the studio at Bristol, Conn.
The on-court absent official, Anthony Jordan, tore his calf muscle warming up. Jordan was too injured to work the game rather than too cheap to work the game onsite like ESPNU leaving its announcing crew announcing off a TV monitor back in Bristol.
Since the SEC accommodated ESPNU at the inconvenience of attending fans with an 8:30 p.m. tip-off, the least it seemed ESPNU could do was show up.
ESPN, the self-styled "leader in sports" with its "family of networks" seems fast approaching a monopoly. It acts like a monopoly even faster than it approaches becoming one.
Certainly it speaks well of Arkansas fans that an announced 18,352 embraced the late show and kept the house full until some exited with Ole Miss up 18 with seven minutes left of its 96-82 victory.
Predictably after games with a short-handed or substituted officiating crew usually due to travel problems, illness or injuries, the winning coach finds the situation easier to live with than the losing coach.
Ole Miss Coach Andy Kennedy lauded the two-man crew of Glenn Tuitt and Marc Ellard as generally doing the best they could under trying circumstances.
Arkansas Coach Mike Anderson, while certainly stressing officiating didn't cost Arkansas the game that he said the Razorbacks were thoroughly outplayed, said "a game of this magnitude" deserved a full three-man crew, especially the way the Rebels and Razorbacks zoomed up and down the court.
They were both right.
A couple of snowy nights from Barnhill Arena past recall memories of hastily thrown together officiating crews because one or more of the officials couldn't fly to Fayetteville.
The late Borys Malcyzcki, a local referee but also a former Razorbacks assistant football coach become the Pabst distributor supplying beverages for various Razorbacks functions, arrived at Barnhill in a Hog shirt then surreptitiously switched to a zebra shirt.
The opposing coach didn't see the shirt change. He did look askance, though, when Arkansas center Joe Kleine saw the officiating crew and bellowed, "Oh boy, Borys! Six on five!"
Actually Borys officiated without incident. Eddie Sutton's Hogs won so handily that his coaching adversary was too busy criticizing his own team to criticize the officiating.
The late Abe Lemons, the Texas coach nationally renowned for his acerbic wit, learned that the official hastily summoned to Barnhill replacing the snow-stranded Southwest Conference one hailed from Siloam Springs.
So early on Abe's sarcastic references to "Siloam Springs" accompanied every call that Abe disliked. And of course in Fayetteville he professed disliking most.
By half, though, "Siloam Springs" became Abe's buddy, especially when "Siloam Springs" called a foul on Arkansas that the closer by SWC sanctioned official did not.
"Hey," Abe yelled at the regular ref. "Even Siloam Springs saw that! Why the hell can't you?"
Sports on 01/19/2015