The ISU football team’s 37-14 loss to Texas on Saturday night didn’t give ISU fans a lot to be optimistic about after three comeback wins to start the season.

In front of a crowd of 56,390 — the second-most in ISU history — at Jack Trice Stadium, Iowa State (3-1, 0-1 Big 12) committed three costly turnovers in the first quarter alone and accumulated eight penalties for a total of 90 yards.

Some especially nasty sentiment was geared toward the officiating of the game, which caused an uproar of boos from the crowd, half of which fled their seats by halftime when the Longhorns (4-0, 1-0) had taken a 34-0 lead.

The football team didn’t receive much scrutiny after the loss from ISU fans, but the officiating quickly became the subject of fault for the Cyclones’ loss.

Well, we’re here to tell you that scapegoating the referees is not the right thing to do after a loss like that.

Coming into the game, the Cyclones had a turnover margin of -5, meaning for every five turnovers they successfully forced, they turned the ball over 10 times.

That figure worsened to -8 after three first-quarter turnovers, all of which resulted in Texas’ first 13 points of the game.

The referees weren’t the ones who punched the ball out of James White’s arms on the Cyclones’ second drive of the game. They also didn’t pick off Steele Jantz and return the ball inside the ISU red zone later on in the first quarter.

The Cyclones’ first-quarter turnovers were their own, and the 13 points that the Longhorns scored off those turnovers were not sinisterly awarded because the referees were conspiring against the Cyclones.

“It was frustrating,” White said. “But I feel like the refs, they have a pretty tough job to do, they’re trying to watch everything on the field.”

Now, we’re not saying the referees’ calls didn’t affect the game, because they did. Of the Cyclones’ eight penalties, six were of 10 yards or more, with a handful of holding calls that yielded a series of boos from Cyclone fans.

Critics of the Cyclones’ play on Saturday would say that the multiple calls would be due to coaching, but the players don’t necessarily feel that way.

“The coaching can only take you so far,” said receiver Darius Reynolds, who was flagged for holding twice on Saturday.

“The coaches aren’t out there playing for us on Saturday. The techniques that the coaches teach us are all the right techniques. I felt like I did use the right technique on some plays that they did call holding, so I don’t know. It just comes down to the refs and what the refs see I guess.”

So here we are, back to the referees. Again, before blaming them, consider this: the Cyclones were, at one point this year, the second-most penalized team out of 120 FBS teams with 30 penalties in three games.

Iowa State was averaging 10 penalties a game, so some amount of the benefit of the doubt has to go in favor of the referees. The fact that the Cyclones were penalized even more against Texas shouldn’t warrant any ill-will toward the officiating itself.

Yes, we understand that the loss was crushing and maybe even embarrassing to some Cyclone fans. But consider looking at the big picture before rushing to throw the officiating under the bus as the sole reason for the Cyclones’ first loss of the season.

The mistakes will continue to be addressed by the ISU coaching staff, the team itself will continue to work on negating the simple mistakes that proved to be fatal in its loss to Texas and will treat that game as a learning experience instead of dwelling on what could have been.