Were the entire officiating crews from the Georgia-Alabama, Mississippi State-Tennessee, Washington-Ohio State, Buffalo-New Orleans, Tampa Bay-Toronto, or Green Bay-Cleveland games suspended for bad calls? No, that's not true: No such suspension announcements have been made as of September 28, 2025. Facebook pages making those claims and websites those posts link to are managed from Vietnam as part of a click-bait network aimed at American sports fans.
One example of the claim appeared in a post (archived here) published by the Hunker Down HQ Facebook page on September 28, 2025. It read:
BREAKING NEWS: The entire four-man officiating crew from the Georgia vs. Alabama game has been s@spended pending investigation, after the N.C.A.A identified a series of controversial decisions that appeared to consistently disadvantage the Georgia Bulldogs.Despite fighting with grit until the very last second, the Bulldogs were forced to accept a narrow defeat to Alabama. Speaking to the media after the game, head coach Kirby Smart made his frustration clear, delivering a sharp five-word remark that immediately became the center of heated discussion.
(Source: Facebook screenshot taken on Mon Sep 29 04:28:24 2025 UTC)
Lead Stories identified fake posts making nearly identical claims targeting fans of the college football teams of Alabama (archived here), Georgia (archived here), Tennessee (archived here), and Ohio State (archived here). Other posts target fans of the NFL's Buffalo Bills (archived here) and the Green Bay Packers (archived here). Another post made the claim about the umpires aimed at fans of Major League Baseball's Toronto Blue Jays (archived here).
(Image Source: Lead Stories composite image with screenshots from Facebook.com.)
All of these Facebook pages are managed primarily from Vietnam, according to Meta's transparency data.
(Image Source: Lead Stories composite image with screenshots from Facebook.com.)
The posts each include a link to an article on a website that Lead Stories has also tracked to administrators based in Vietnam. The article (archived here) linked to the Georgia Bulldogs post is titled "BREAKING NEWS: Eпtire Officiatiпg Crew Sυspeпded After Georgia vs. Alabama Coпtroversy."
(Image Source: Lead Stories screenshot from feji.io)
A Google news search (archived here) for the terms "officiating crew suspended" returned articles about the Big 12 conference suspending the entire officiating crew from the Missouri-Kansas game on September 6, 2025, but nothing about the games mentioned in these Facebook posts.
(Source: screenshot of google.com by Lead Stories)
Fake fan pages managed from Southeast Asia have spread across Facebook timelines since Meta ended (archived here) its third-party fact-checking program, which Lead Stories was a part of for six years. We have identified and debunked dozens (archived here) of such pages and websites in recent months.
Facebook users can easily identify these types of accounts by accessing the transparency data.
(Image Source: Lead Stories screenshots of Facebook transparency reports.)
