Utah athletic director Mark Harlan should know better.

Just last year, he was a member of the College Football Playoff selection committee that was besieged by threats so ugly and violent they required law enforcement attention after Florida State was left out of the four-team CFP field. But on Saturday night, after a late defensive holding penalty helped BYU beat the Utes, Harlan questioned the competence and integrity of the Big 12 officials working the game.

“This game was absolutely stolen from us,” Harlan said minutes after Utah’s 22-21 loss, in a most unusual appearance by an AD at his team’s postgame news conference. “We were excited about being in the Big 12, but tonight I am not.”

Even putting aside the fact that the call that set Harlan off was far from egregious, at a time when officials are getting relentlessly hammered and more fans than ever seem to believe conferences are protecting their best teams through slanted officiating, a person in a leadership position within college sports should not be fanning those flames.

Officiating in college football needs to be better, especially as the stakes and the revenue continue to rise. But the men and women who do those jobs — much like the selection committee that snubbed Florida State — are doing the best they can with a difficult task. College football doesn’t necessarily have an officiating crisis, but it could be heading for a crisis in confidence if those within the game continue to feed the conspiracy theorists.

“As you get into November, a lot of moving pieces are there,” said former Wyoming coach Craig Bohl, who is now executive director of the American Football Coaches Association. “You’re coming down to maybe a conference championship, CFP entrance, emotions run high, but I think we’re going to be better served as coaches if we recognize that those officials are well-trained, they’re well resourced, and a lot of times on Sunday things look different. And I just found through the years that things are better served by having off-line conversations.”

Harlan was fined $40,000 and reprimanded by the Big 12. He did not quite apologize.