At a time when the SEC has made plenty of news for not wanting NFL players, the ACC has made a little news for something the NFL should want.
During Saturday’s game between North Carolina State and Virginia, the conference that introduced officiating transparency in 2025 added a FIFA-style ref cam.
It’s absolutely something the NFL should embrace. Regardless of its potential value in the review process, it looks great. It gives viewers another way of experiencing the game, with a viewpoint that is more immersive and first-person than any other available camera angles.
The decision to let viewers see and hear the replay-review sausage being made, along with the new ref cam, makes the ACC not only the most innovative college football conference but also puts it ahead of the NFL.
As Sean Keeley of Awful Announcing recently explained, the ACC plans to have even more officiating transparency in 2026. Last year, the ACC presented 27 games featuring full transparency. This year, it will have 27 such games in the first three weeks.
At the professional level, the UFL has done the same thing. Former NFL senior V.P. of officiating Dean Blandino, who now works for both Fox and the UFL, has addressed both the value of transparency and the reasons why the NFL may be reluctant to go there.
Broncos coach Sean Payton, a member of the NFL’s Competition Committee, believes the league will nevertheless make the change within the next two or three years.
The NFL should already be there. The fact that the UFL and the ACC have taken the lead on such an important issue in the age of bet! bet! bet! becomes a bad look for America’s preeminent sports league.
The more the NFL drags its feet, the more glaring it will become. Especially if other college conferences get on board with giving viewers the kind of access to officiating that will help the tinfoil-hat crowd realize that, when critical decisions are being made, the fix is absolutely not in.
Frankly, the fact that lesser leagues and levels of the sport have fully embraced something the NFL continues to resist will serve only to increase suspicions as to whether something fishy may be going on when the process of reviewing plays slips behind a curtain to which no one on the outside has access.
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