Saturday’s crucial ACC matchup between Georgia Tech and Miami has an added layer of intrigue as the ACC Coordinator of Football Officiating has announced that Miami Coach Mark Richt will be the head referee for the game.

Though Georgia Tech has loudly protested the decision, stating that it’s literally impossible for Coach Richt to be an impartial judge in a game that he’s also competing in, those protests and the subsequent demand that he resign were shot down by Coach/Referee Richt in a press conference earlier today.

Coach/Referee Richt dismissed any notion that he’d step down as referee, stating that the burden of refereeing the game would likely fall to the rest of the refereeing crew: “I made a commitment to coach and also serve as referee, and that’s what I’m doing. For anyone to think there’s a way to manipulate the game because you’re also the referee is outrageous. It’s just them trying to distract from Georgia Tech’s problems on defense.”

Richt went on to assure the press that he would in no way allow his desire to win as Miami’s coach interfere with his duties as referee. He promised that there was no chance he would change the location of the game at the last second, and Richt was adamant that the replay monitor definitely wouldn’t be missing its power cord at the exact moment that Georgia Tech chooses to challenge a crucial play. Miami’s coach/the referee for the game also swore that he wouldn’t use a really vague interpretation of the rules to determine that Georgia Tech’s receivers were actually ineligible the entire time.



Later in the press conference, Coach/Referee Richt also announced that Georgia Tech star linebacker Bruce Jordan-Swilling and defensive lineman Anree Saint-Amour will be ineligible to play due to a missing hyphen in the official player registry. According to Richt, the difference in how the players’ names are spelled in the player registry versus how the names are spelled on their student IDs made it impossible to determine if they are who they say they are. When confronted about this issue, Richt called the issue a “manufactured crisis,” stating that the play of two star players definitely wouldn’t make a difference on a squad with 117 players.

In addition to his duties as head referee for Saturday’s matchup, Richt has also been selected as the Replay Official should Georgia Tech wish to challenge any close calls.

Disclaimer: This is a work of satire and does not represent the views, nor is it officially associated with, Georgia Tech.