This is very true. Holding is probably the most crucial penalty because it's the one penalty that is most likely to be a complete drive-killer. Therefore, it is critical that it is applied evenly to all teams.
Alabama Alum completely agree that LSU Alum are really just bad people as a whole and complain like children. Make it known to Alabama/UGA/UF that in order to keep LSU in the SEC? To even things up? SEC Headquarters must relocate to New Orleans for the next 20 to 30 years. Then the nation will witness the most corrupt sports institution at her finest whining/complaining and hell raising from the lovely campus in Tuscaloosa.
The trouble is that holding is the one penalty that can be called on almost every play in the SEC and in the NFL. The offensive line talent is very good and they hold like pro's. Part of being a top modern offensive linemen is the ability to hold without being too overt. The officials know that they can't stop the game and pace off yards on every down. Referees have gotten where they only call holding when it is flagrant and affects the play. It is very much a judgement call and the mark of a good officiating team is one that is consistent from ref to ref in making that call. From time to time a young offensive linemen gets his ass handed to him repeatedly by a stud defensive lineman and resorts to flagrant holding for the rest of the game. After a flag or two, the refs just let them play. I once saw Glen Dorsey triple teamed and two of the three interior linemen were holding. Dorsey still got in on the tackle--no flag. Clowney gets held all the time, he just has to deal with it. It's part of the price of exception athleticism. In Shaq's last year at LSU every team in the SEC was just flagrantly fouling him. To avoid having an entire team foul out of the game, the ref's eventually started expecting Shaq to deal with it . . . which he did. Its one reason that he went into the NBA fully capable of dealing with pro-style hacking and collisions. It is to be expected that the teams stocked with future NFL offensive linemen are going to get more holding calls. I would very much like to see the holding stats for the SEC in the last four years.
Which conferences do this? What's funny to me is if we were to jump over to a forum like this, but in a different conference, we'd see the same complaints about officiating. We're what? Two years removed from the Big12's crews being criticized weekly?
