(Written by kencraw)

Let’s say I’m about to leave my house on the way to the Cal game at AT&T. I put my backpack full of stuff by the door. My wife decides she’d prefer to use that backpack so she takes all my stuff for the boys (food, sweatshirts, etc.) out of the backpack and puts all the stuff she needs for the day, puts it in the backpack and puts it right where I left it. I pickup the backpack, put it in the car and pack up and leave none the wiser about the change in contents. I go to my friend’s house to pick him up, as he’s coming to the game and we get on the road.

About 10 minutes later I get a call on the cell. My wife explains about the backpack switch. So I turn around and the whole way back home I’m belittling my wife. What an idiot she is. Why’d see take the backpack in the first place? Or at least why didn’t she tell me? Or if not even that, why didn’t she put it someplace other than the exact same place I put it so I wouldn’t be confused? What an bad call by her.

We get home, everyone piles out of the car and my wife meets us at the door with a different backpack loaded with the stuff I originally had. She apologizes, admits the mistake was hers and sends us on our way with no effect on the final outcome, although the final score on the arrival time at the park was closer than it should have been.

Now to the point:

Don’t you think my wife has the right to reprimand me for my behavior when she finds out later about my belittling her in the car (my kids are blabber-mouths) even though the original mistake was hers and she has admitted as much?

Of course she does.

And just as much, that’s why all the scoffing about Tedford being reprimanded by Larry Scott, the Pac-12 commissioner, is short sighted. The Pac-12 has rules and one of those rules is that they don’t air the family laundry to the general public. There’s an internal process to complain about bad calls and those grievances shouldn’t be taken to the press.

If there’s an argument to be made in Tedford’s defense it’s that he really didn’t say much at all, just an off-hand remark it was a bad call. Did he really insult the referees or “create doubts about the credibility of the Conference’s officiating program”. News flash: refs make mistakes on occasion. Merely pointing it out doesn’t seem that egregious. He didn’t seem to complain.

But that’s not what people are focusing on. They’re focusing on the fact that the league admitted it was a bad call. In my opinion, that’s not relevant. Coaches are part of the Pac-12 family and they’re not to speak badly of it. It appears not even in small ways.

…and as a man who loves his family and would never say anything negative about my wife or kids, that doesn’t see so outlandish to me.