I really feel like Vanderbilt may have cost Georgia a trip to the playoff. The 'Dores had Notre Dame beaten. Vandy agreed to let Notre Dame use their own officials (and replay person) for the road game and the officiating was terrible. An SEC team should never agree to play any team on the road without SEC officials.

If Vanderbilt had beaten Notre Dame in South Bend, then UGA would have made the playoffs.

15 September 2018: Notre Dame 22, Vanderbilt 17 (game officiated by ACC referee Tra Blake's crew)

9 September 2017: UGA 20, Notre Dame 19 (game officiated by SEC referee Matt Austin's crew)

IMO, in these non-conference matchups a referee crew from another conference should be used to obviate conference bias.

Btw, Notre Dame became a member of the ACC in all sports except for football in 2012. This season the Fighting Irish played five ACC opponents (i.e., Wake Forest, Virginia Tech, Pitt, FSU, and Syracuse). Yet since they're a football "independent", they didn't have to play a conference championship game (where they would have faced Clemson).

As an aside, every year fans complain about officiating. To help fix that, I'd like to see FBS programs officiated by professionals that are full-time employees (paid by the NCAA and Conferences). That way officials could get in shape, master the rulebook, video reviews, and get comfortable working w/ each other during spring and preseason practices/scrimmages b/4 the season started. During the season and playoffs/bowl games officials would continue their improvement, culminating in well-officiated games. Pay the referees a % of the gross revenue rather than stuffing the coaches wallets and building $55M football operations centers. Btw, if I'm not mistaken, NCAA programs are supposed to be "non-profits".