There is a reason the ISU football team will never line up for a game against Ames High School.

There is also a reason the Cyclones, or any other college football team for that matter, will never make a trip to Kansas City to play some ball against the Chiefs.

It’s because the teams in the matchup aren’t in the same league, and aren’t near the same level.

Then why – WHY – are officials from conferences like the Sun Belt and Conference USA officiating meaningful bowl games? Please, tell me. I’ve been looking for an answer for the past several weeks.

(And while you’re at it, try to find the line in this column I’ve paraphrased from Wedding Crashers.)

The officiating this bowl season was awful. I have never seen so many blown calls during one setting of college football.

Two games in particular stick out as extremely heinous: the Outback Bowl between Iowa and Florida and the Alamo Bowl between Michigan and Nebraska.

I can think of five grievously blown calls from the Outback Bowl off the top of my head:

– A roughing the kicker call on Iowa that wasn’t close to roughing the kicker.

– An unnecessary roughness penalty called on Iowa after a perfectly legal tackle.

– Florida having 12 men on the field, the infraction so obvious an official had to get out of the way so the extra player could get off the field.

– A successful Iowa onside kick that was called back on an offside penalty that clearly didn’t take place.

– Florida again having 12 men on the field during that same play.

That final blown call led to the following frantic exchange between yours truly and my friend Evan, a diehard Hawkeye fan and doctor-in-training at Iowa.

Evan: Did you see THAT!

Me: YES! I don’t even like Iowa and I’m pissed!

Even ESPN’s Chris Spielman (aka The Guy Who Can’t Talk) threw out a gem, calling the flag “unconscionable.”

And I don’t mean to pick on Conference USA, because I don’t believe the Sun Belt exists either.

Officials from that conference called the Michigan-Nebraska Alamo Bowl.

How can what seemed to be half the entire stadium be on the field before the game has ended and no flags be thrown? And that’s just the tip of the iceberg in the Alamo Bowl blown call department.

The point is this. Big-time games between big-time teams are not places for officials from a second-tier conference to be. The game is too fast and the athletes too skilled for officials who have spent the season watching Tulane take on Rice.

It’s a different ballgame, one those officials have no business being in. There’s a reason someone who is an official in Conference USA is an official in Conference USA.

I think Iowa Athletic Director Bob Bowlsby said it best in an interview with The Des Moines Register.

“Take an officiating crew from the Sun Belt Conference. If those guys were as good as the guys we have working in our league, they would be working in our league.”

So, please, protect the game. Use real officials when the big boys come to play.

– Grant Wall is a junior in journalism and mass communication from Fort Dodge.