Of the SEC coaches that won't be exchanging holiday cards this winter, count Arkansas' Bret Bielema and Auburn's Gus Malzahn among them. Bielema has alerted the SEC office that game film he received from Auburn to prepare for Saturday's Arkansas home game against the Tigers was improperly edited, according to ledger-enquirer.com.
"There are just some clips that haven't, shall we say, the TV copy doesn't match the film copy," Bielema said.
It is common for coaching staffs to exchange film with which to prepare for one another. The film exchanged by the coaches, by design, is shot from different angles than what television networks use. Preparation is the purpose for one, viewing audience experience the purpose of the other. Bielema went on to describe the issue in detail.
Week 9: Things we learned
From Johnny Manziel keeping his jersey clean vs. Vanderbilt to Duke's big upset of Virginia Tech, here are the 28 lessons learned from the college football weekend. **More ...**
"On the TV copy, they have a swinging gate at the beginning of the play, which obviously happened. It was on the TV copy. And when we got the video copy from them today, that exact same play doesn't show any of the gate. ... So, if I hadn't watched the TV copy, or if our guys hadn't had the time to go back and review, we would have never known that to happen."
It's not the first time these two of four new coaching staffs in the SEC have gotten sideways with one another. Bielema and Malzahn had an indirect exchange, through media, about whether the hurry-up, no-huddle offense created a safety issue for players. Later in the season, Bielema took exception to an Auburn assistant coach mentioning an Arkansas player's injury via Twitter a day before Bielema himself was prepared to release the news.
And now comes TapeGate, which Bielema brought up, but then downplayed, with tongue planted firmly in cheek.
"I'm sure it's a glitch," Bielema said. "I know Gus stands for everything that's right and (has) great faith in doing things right. So, I'm sure it's just a glitch that they'll get to the bottom of."
Follow Chase Goodbread on Twitter *@ChaseGoodbread*.