Finally, some public accountability for officials

There are three groups of people whose decisions and performance decide the outcome of a football game: players, coaches, and officials. Two of those groups have to answer publicly for their performances, and one does not.

You'll never see an official standing behind a podium answering questions in a post-game press conference -- which is fair, because you'll also never see a zebra win a Ref of the Week award for an outstanding holding call -- but now the Pac-12 has added some level of public accountability to the third team on the field.

In response to last season's scandal, in which an untrained, non-official, conference executive incorrectly overturned a targeting call, the league will take the following steps:

Also, this is how the conference will handle its replay process:

The SEC has taken a half-step in this direction by opening a Twitter account dedicated to explaining its controversial decisions, and now the Pac-12 will publicly explain its game-changing decisions as well. It's time for all FBS conferences to follow suit.