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Maybe the pitchforks should be spared on John O’Neill.

That catch by Penn State tight end Pat Freiermuth in the third quarter of Penn State’s 17-12 win at Iowa? The Big Ten says replay official Tom Kissinger ultimately had final word on whether the crew would overturn a call made on the field as a touchdown. And it was, after all, O’Neill’s on-field crew that called it a TD in the first place.

That was about the only takeaway from a brief response PennLive sports manager Greg Pickel received on Monday from the Big Ten office in Chicago. In it, the league said:

“The Big Ten uses an in-stadium collaborative replay process between the on-field officials and the replay officials in the booth, with final decisions made by the replay official as laid out by Rule 12, Section 1, Article 2 of the NCAA Rule Book.”

We were looking for any sort of clarification to the process by which veteran referee O’Neill and Kissinger collaborated on the call. Because, actually, the NCAA Rule Book does not specifically stipulate who has final say. It only relates to how the replay official should proceed. Here’s what Rule 12, Section 1, Article 2 says:

“The instant replay process operates under the fundamental assumption that the ruling on the field is correct. The replay official may reverse a ruling if and only if the video evidence convinces him beyond all doubt that the ruling was incorrect. Without such indisputable video evidence, the replay official must allow the ruling to stand.”

I can guarantee you that the Big Ten will never release a word from Kissinger on this. So, we’ll never know what his rationale could have been for overturning the call. To me, not only did the replay shot directly from the pylon not warrant an overturn, it confirmed the original call of a touchdown. I don’t know of anyone who believes an overturn could be rationalized.

As for O’Neill, I spent some of Monday trying to clear up a little internet legend regarding him. As I detailed in the Sunday Morning Quarterback, O’Neill’s track record in games involving Penn State has been sketchy. I don’t think under any stretch I can be referred to as a Penn State homer reporter. But even I have to admit the latest incident makes me wonder about objectivity. And I’m somebody who reflexively believes that officials at this level do, in fact, overwhelmingly strive to be objective and fair.

But, because of O’Neill’s record regarding Penn State, a couple of stories have been floated by chatboard and Twitter types about the longtime Big Ten referee. One is that former PSU defensive tackle Devon Still and quarterback Matt McGloin accused him in postgame comments of expressing a lack of objectivity regarding PSU in 2011 and 2012, respectively.

I knew of no such statements. Nor do I remember hearing them. That doesn’t mean they weren’t said when I happened to be interviewing someone else.

I managed to track down McGloin on Monday to see what he recalled.

Legend has it that McGloin went off on O’Neill specifically at Nebraska in 2012 after the Nittany Lions’ 32-23 loss. Under debate was Matt Lehman’s dive into the end zone for what should have been a TD but was called a fumble; and McGloin’s own penalty for grounding from the end zone. He thought he was outside the tackle box and he may have been right, but it was close. O’Neill’s crew called it grounding and a safety.

Anyway, eight years later, McGloin said he recalls saying nothing about O’Neill or vice versa:

“You get heated in press conferences, especially after a loss. But I don’t remember saying anything. And I don’t remember John O’Neill saying anything to me.

“It’s something you would remember because it would stick out. But I’m trying to make this 100 percent clear: I don’t remember.”

I attempted to reach Still as well, who I’m told just recently became father to a second child and was in Houston on Monday, but I’ve been so far unsuccessful.

Anyway, in my mind, it’s like this: While John O’Neill certainly has had his share of well-detailed encounters with Penn State where he and his crews made glaring errors in 2012, 2014 and against Iowa on Saturday, assuming that he is actively trying to cause PSU to lose is still a cognitive stretch. The fact is, the league says the latest event was not his decision.

And if he was actively trying to cheat Penn State and the Big Ten suspected as much, do you think the conference would tolerate it? PSU is one of its biggest cash cows.

The latest stink will be an alert. But that said, I think everyone needs to take a step back and realize: 1. Big Ten reps are the last ones who want any perception of impropriety out there. They watch what fans and writers say and it was pretty clear to them that PSU fans were dreading O’Neill working the Iowa game even before it kicked off. 2. Little or nothing can be done to prove anyone “has it out” for a certain member school, even under the assumption that such a thing could be true. It’s ultimately up to the referee’s integrity and his performance overall. And if he’s bad enough and it looks bad enough for the Big Ten, the league will eventually act. That’s the only way it’ll happen.

The O’Neill (and Kissinger as replay official) crew has had dust-ups with other schools as well, most notably Michigan State’s 39-38 loss at Nebraska in 2015 in which a Cornhuskers receiver was absurdly ruled to have been pushed out of bounds before a game-winning TD catch. He wasn’t, but it couldn’t be overturned because of a stipulation in the replay rules. So, they just pretended it happened and moved on.

Incompetence, not conniving against any particular team, is still my default setting on these guys. I’m not discarding the latter out of hand. But given all the evidence, it’s the most likely option to me at this point. Until I see some evidence to the contrary, that’s how I’ll continue to treat it.

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