Officials gone wild

It’s usually a coach or player that gets ejected. Today it was two former NC State players that were in the stands for the game against Florida State. Tom Gugliotta and Chris Corchiani were sitting behind the scores table today when ejected by Karl Hess. CBSSports.com talked to Corchiani, who said “There were seven or eight different calls we were contesting, we were yelling, but we didn’t even yell a profanity or even threaten him.” Corchiani also told CBSSports that Hess tried to have another fan ejected earlier in the game.

Karl Hess is in his 16th season as an official (Google Images)

ACC Supervisor of Officials John Clougherty released a statement about the ejection. “Under Rule 10, when circumstances warrant, an official has the authority to request home game management to eject fans when the behavior, in the officials’ judgement, is extreme or excessive. It’s unfortunate in this instance that ACC protocol of communicating directly with the home game management was not followed, and instead, a building security officer was solicited. We will re-communicate this policy with all officials to ensure proper protocol is followed.”

According to statsheet.com, Hess is in his 16^th season as an official and has 11 ejections in 1251 games, with 3 coming in the 2008-09 and 1999-2000 seasons.

This ejection had me thinking which ejection is more unbelievable; the ejections of Gugliotta and Corchiani or the ejection of Sammy the Owl from Rice in 2009 by Curtis Shaw?

What do you think, should officials be able to eject fans or mascots for yelling at them or is it just part of the game?

Back to the game, Florida State’s Ian Miller led the Seminoles from off the bench with 17 points in a 76-62 victory over the Wolfpack who was led by C.J. Leslie with 21 points. and 9 rebounds.