Ado about nothin'

 And now a Blob feature just for today, This Week In Big Whoop, in which something happened that got treated like news even though it wasn't. And thus was pretty much why the general public reacted by saying "Yeah? Big whoop."

Come on down, NCAA!

Whose review, and an independent review by the Associated Press, concluded that the officiating in last spring's LSU-Iowa women's national championship game ... well, could have been better. 

I know, I know. You're as shocked as I am by this revelation. College basketball officiating not being up to snuff? 

Why, next you're gonna tell us the sun rises in the east.

Anyway, the blown calls apparently included a foul on LSU star Angel Reese, and a couple of missed offensive foul calls, and a delay of game call on Iowa star Caitlin Clark in the third quarter that tagged her with her fourth foul. 

The last was a pivotal screwup by Stripes, seeing how LSU was only up by, I don't know, eleventy-hundred points by that time. And it severely affected Clark's game, seeing how she only went for 30 points in Iowa's 17-point loss.

In other words, the title game was a blowout for LSU, which led by 17 at the half and never looked back. The Tigers shot 54.3 percent (38-of-70) and a mind-numbing 64.7 percent (11-of-17) from the 3-point arc. And they made every one of those shots without any visible aid from the game officials -- who were, as always, 0-for-0 from the floor, 0-for-0 from the line and scored 0 points.

Which makes you wonder why the NCAA was wrinkling its brow over the officiating in this game, considering whatever calls were missed had as much impact on the outcome as a screen door in a hurricane. And therefore was newsworthy only because more people than usual were asking "Why is this newsworthy?"

This is not to say that officiating never has an impact on our games. The Blob concedes it does sometimes. But the Blob also maintains that the notion the refs are out to screw a particular team in a particular game is more often the product of partisan zealotry than common sense.

That's because (again, in the Blob's opinion) bad refs are just bad refs. Which means they're as likely to blow a call against Those Other Guys as Our Guys. I'd wager that for every instance a horrible call at a horrible time cost Our Guys dearly, you can find an equally horrible call at a less-horrible time that went in Our Guys' favor.

That's what I've observed, anyway, as someone who was paid for 40 years to watch (and write about) games. Truth is, there are a whole wagonload of factors that decide the outcome of any sporting event. Consequently I've never seen lousy officiating decide one all by its lonesome.

That's especially true of the Iowa-LSU game. Hell, LSU coach Kim Mulkey's Vegas Showgirl Sparklepalooza outfit had more to do with that one than the officiating did.

So, yeah. Big whoop.