Surely by now you’ve seen or have heard about this ESPN The Magazine story that takes an interesting route to preview Wednesday’s Orange Bowl. The writer talks to officials who have covered Big East and ACC games.

Neat perspective and a rewarding quote regarding WVU.

“The biggest difference we’ve all noticed so far when it comes to how Bill Stewart ran things versus how Dana Holgorsen does it has been sideline discipline. It just feels like total chaos at times. Maybe he’s still figuring out the CEO part of the job, but a crazy sideline is usually an indicator of disorganization elsewhere. … Catch them in one of those stretches and you can gash them. That’s why they lost games they shouldn’t have and had so many that were close that shouldn’t have been.”

And surely you know this went over about as well as Krusty the Clown at a coulrophobic’s birthday party. WVU didn’t take the criticism too well or too lightly Monday — and you can understand why. I mean, really,a Big East official commenting on chaos? I expect Dennis Leary to be at practice today to wash Dana’s mouth out with soap.

These guys do remember they cost Toledo a game against Syracuse because they somehow called a clearly missed extra point good. They also lost count of the downs when the Mountaineers played at Cincinnati and had to review it … which was one of six reviews in that game.

Officiating is a hard job. Unspeakably hard. Those are two of the easiest things they will ever have to do and officials should never screw either of those two up in their career. They pulled it off in the same season.

These are the guys who also told Dana he couldn’t ask for a review to see if Syracuse had too many players on the field (they did) on a key play in the game, even though the rulebook clearly states you can and Holgorsen tried to explain that to the guys who are supposed to know those rules. These are also the guys who stopped WVU’s last drive at USF to review and overturn a penalty against the Bulls for an illegal substitution. I think that might have been my favorite moment of the season.

In short, these are not the guys who should be talking. And that they’re talking is the issue, I think. I don’t have a problem with the story at all. I don’t think WVU does, either, even though just about every sideline is chaotic and Oll Stew’s ducks were rarely ever in a row. Nevertheless, it’s a clever perspective and on a different day or with a different source, you might get wonderful insight. Anonymitiy kills it, though, and in the back of his mind, doesn’t Dana just have to see red the next time he sees a Big East crew? Someone out there is assailing him. Again. He can’t blame anyone specifically. He might blame everyone.

And what if it becomes an issue on the other side? What if other Big East officials read that and they look for the chaos and they spot what they now perceive to be poor discipline. Might they officiate more strictly? Might they have a shorter fuse if Holgorsen starts to burn them in a game? It’s a dangerous experiment.

Of course, the irony here is Dana can’t say anything about officiating. Nor can players. Eu did after the Cincinnati game and he was reprimanded because he violated this part of the Big East’s rules:

Individuals shall refrain from all public criticism, inclusive of all forms of communication, relative to game officials, student-athletes, coaches, team personnel, athletic administrators, Conference office staff members or spectators.

Tell me how the official did anything different? So in conversation Monday, and almost as a joke, I mentioned this to someone at WVU and said, “Why don’t you guys ask the Big East to reprimand the official?” The reply: “How do you know we won’t?” followed by said person simply walking away from the conversation.