Maryland has suspended freshman center Diamond Stone one game for his actions against Wisconsin‘s Vitto Brown last Saturday.
The athletic directors, coaches and even players have shared apologies and the Big Ten Conference has reprimanded Stone for his actions.
The Big Ten did what it normally does, get the last word. The conference issued a press release that says at the end, “The Big Ten Conference considers this matter concluded and will have no further comment.”
What the Big Ten didn’t do is reprimand its officiating crew for not ejecting Stone from the game in the first place. Stone should have been hit with a “Flagrant 1” which would have included an ejection from the contest. Instead, Stone was handed a “Flagrant 2” and allowed to play on.
The Big Ten Conference agreed with Maryland with regards to the one-game suspension but stopped short of placing some of the blame on its own officiating crew. Then they pulled one of their famous “the matter is concluded and will have no further comment” endings, just so they won’t have to deal with it any further.
The officials certainly didn’t ask for this mess, but it is their job to deal with it. When they have instant replay to fall back on, there was only one true conclusion and the guys in stripes messed it up. The Big Ten loves to issue reprimand’s, but they have a hard time enforcing it on their own.
