Dear Mr. Anderson,

Although you have made a statement in regards to the controversial call late in the Texas at Iowa State game Thursday, you're not done yet.

Because you have, to this point, completely ignored both the real specific mistake (or was it?) made by your officials as well as the big picture incompetence of not only the specific crew working in Ames on Thursday, but the entire fraternity of Big 12 football officials as a whole. You better sit down; this might take a while.

Let me start with a positive: your statement regarding the replay decision from the ISU-Texas fumble/non-fumble play actually passes the smell test. There wasn't a video replay that conclusively showed the runner's body as the ball being stripped out of his hands. It could not be determined from video replay if he was down or not before he fumbled. Technically. So your replay official gets a reluctant thumbs-up on that because we probably don't want replay officials making rulings based on what they couldn't see, but think was probably what happened. That's a Pandora's box that could keep Texas undefeated to infinity and beyond.

But Walt - can I call you Walt? - that wasn't really the problem. The problem was the so-called ruling on the field. I would like to call it the "original" ruling, but I don't think anyone can say what the original ruling was. Because it seemed to be changing by the second as the play unfolded. And that, Mr. Supervisor of Officials, is why Big 12 officiating is considered incompetent at best and corrupt at worst. I happen to believe it is the latter.

Let's walk through it together, you and me. The Texas ball carrier disappears into a sea of humanity - not uncommon on an inside running play near the goal line. Your officials, five of whom are on the line of scrimmage or in close proximity to it, are all watching the play and none of them have a view that is good enough to determine when the ball carrier is down by contact. How do I know that? Easy. Because none of them blew their whistle and raised their hand, the universal audible and visible signals that a ball carrier is down.

So Walt, this is where you and I come to be at loggerheads with one another. Because that is, put bluntly, bullshit bad officiating. On so many levels. The "ruling on the field" was down by contact, yet none of your officiating crew blew a whistle until the Iowa State defender was several steps the other direction with the ball in hand. How is that? Aren't officials supposed to blow their whistle when a ball carrier is down by contact? If not immediately, almost immediately. We're all fine with a minimal delay that can be attributed to human reaction time. But several seconds later? C'mon, Walt, your guys are slow, but they aren't that slow.

The valid inference that can be made is that the "ruling on the field" was subjectively changing as the play progressed based on what was happening and what was to happen next. As long as the Texas ball carrier might have still be up, might still be progressing forward, might have still had a chance to score a touchdown: no whistle. It was almost as if the officials held off on blowing their whistle while there was still some possibility of Texas scoring on that play. Nah, that couldn't be, right? What we do know with absolute certainty is the whistle did not blow while the Texas player had the ball. Therefore, he was not down by contact. It just can't be so.

Interestingly, as soon as an Iowa State player emerged with the ball AND your officials had time to see that was the case, the whistle blowing started like it was going out of style. All of the sudden, everybody on the field with a whistle had a clear view of what had happened several seconds earlier. I'm at a loss, Walt, because that is borderline supernatural. I'm an official, and I can't see what I am looking at as I am looking at it live, but several seconds later, all of the sudden I can see what I had been looking at previously. Before, I couldn't see the ball carrier to call him down. But now, I can! He was down by contact!

Do you see the problem here, Walt? Your officials are making up their mind and changing their mind depending on what happens and, more dastardly, what happens NEXT. If something good happens for Texas NEXT - say the back keeps moving forward and ends up in or near the end zone - he's not down. But if Iowa State ends up with the ball running for a touchdown going the opposite way NEXT - he is down. The ruling on the field is subjectively made after seeing what happens next. Why would officials do that, Walt?

What a great world it would be if we could all base our decisions after seeing what happens NEXT. Stock brokers could buy and sell after they know what direction a stock is going to move. Doctors could crack a chest or shock a heart based knowing which one would kill the patient and which one would save him. Golfers could pick their club and play their shot after knowing where it would end up. My kid could know what things to memorize for a test if he saw the test first. The world would be an amazing place, Walt. We'd all get the outcome we wanted. Like the Big 12 did Thursday night.

fist-pumped a Texas touchdown in 2005. Am I to understand that same official, Mr. Bevo Fist Pumper, was on the ISU/Texas crew Thursday night? That right there is a guy who knows that Texas puts the ching in cha-ching. Texas is the economic engine that pulls the Big 12 train and everybody from a fist-pumping official to the Iowa State athletic department itself knows where the enormous piles of money come from. There's a dirty little obligation to play along. Walt, you know and I know that Texas pay the freight in the Big 12. You get paid more because of Texas. Your boys get paid more because of Texas. Heck, one of them evenin 2005. Am I to understand that same official, Mr. Bevo Fist Pumper, was on the ISU/Texas crew Thursday night? That right there is a guy who knows that Texas puts the ching in cha-ching. Texas is the economic engine that pulls the Big 12 train and everybody from a fist-pumping official to the Iowa State athletic department itself knows where the enormous piles of money come from. There's a dirty little obligation to play along.

But I don't have to keep playing along, Walt. Nobody at the Big 12 office or at Iowa State tells me what to think, what to say, or what not to say. I have my own brain and I use it independently. The trail of incidents and facts don't lie, big guy. Iowa State was on the wrong end of a horrendous call that cost it a victory over Kansas last basketball season in a Big 12 game. You know, Kansas, the Texas of basketball. That's just one recent example. These incidents across sports really squirt a little fuel on the conspiracy fire. Is it just bad officiating? Or is there more to it. Makes you wonder, Walt, it really makes you wonder.

But even giving you and the Big 12 football officials de facto union a break doesn't work out well for you. Because then we transition from subjective calls based on a desired outcome to just plain poor officiating. And there's a lot of that, too, Walt. Did you see how your guys were spotting the ball Thursday night? Spotting the ball in general has become a lazily inexact process to start with. Get it within a yard in either direction and you're doing exemplary work. They don't even try to be better than that. But at least most of your guys round it forward, Walt. The ball is more spotted where the top of the helmet stopped as opposed to the ball. But that crew Thursday night, wow, they were doing it exactly the opposite. Here's where the guy got to, now move it back a yard. Honestly, Walt, it's not splitting atoms. It's spotting a football.

Officiating is poor because, as you and I know, the demand outweighs the supply. Fewer young officials are starting the profession, giving you less new blood to pump in. It greatly reduces the pressure on working officials to do a better job. They know no one will take their place. How many Big 12 officials get fired, Walt? Not fired, per se, because they are contractors, but how many don't get retained due to poor performance? You've got a bottom 20 percent just like every organization there is. Do you cut them loose and bring in a new official for every four you keep? No, because you can't. If you could, Mr. Bevo Fist Pumper wouldn't still be a Big 12 official. Because no league in its right mind would keep an official who roots for a team during a game? But you did.

I know new officials do move up and move into the Big 12 ranks. I used to be a small college commissioner and some of my former officials are now your officials. But even in the little ol' GPAC we were consistently facing a shortage of officials to create naturally better performance. We had some officials who were too old to the do the job and we had some officials who just weren't good enough. But they stayed on because there were no other options.

You have the same problem, Walt. And it's compounded by the written and unwritten rules of your industry and profession that accountability and correction are no-nos. Bad officiating is acknowledged only as a last resort. Calls are overturned on replay only as a last resort. Because officials don't blackball other officials by saying they were wrong unless there is absolutely no other option. It's a tight little frat you've got, Walt, and you're the Big 12 chapter president. I just wish you'd do the ceremonial paddling on each other instead of Iowa State.

Your officials made the call they were supposed to make Thursday night, Walt. So I guess in that way, they did it right. They didn't make a mistake. There is no reason for you to make a public statement that they were in error. Because even though their collectively subjective ruling on a critical game-deciding call was a cluster hump of impropriety, they still made the call that they were supposed to make to keep the Big 12 machine working, as dysfunctionally as that may be.