There’s been a lot of talk about the officiating in Tennessee’s 27-24 loss to South Carolina.

The Vols had three touchdowns wiped off the board due to penalties.

Additionally, officials appeared to miss a couple of key calls that would’ve impacted the game in a big way — specifically defensive pass interference and unnecessary roughness that should’ve been called on South Carolina.

Former Tennessee quarterback Heath Shuler, however, doesn’t blame the officiating for the Vols’ loss to the Gamecocks.

Shuler joined WNML’s SportsTalk on Monday and he pointed out that the penalties that were called on the Vols were simply the result of Tennessee not playing disciplined football.

“The single most important thing that we must resolve is being more disciplined,” said Shuler. “This discipline starts at every single snap at every single practice. We have to be more disciplined. There were no excuses for some of the mistakes and the penalties that we had.

“People who want to say that the officials were (to blame), it was not the officiating. It was the lack of discipline that we had offensively. We can’t have those illegal procedures. We can’t line up wrong. We can’t have those types of things that take touchdowns away from us.”

Tennessee ultimately has no one to blame but themselves for the penalties.

Officiating, just like the game being played on the field, is never going to be perfect. Calls are missed sometimes. It just felt like the calls that went against Tennessee — which, again, were legitimate penalties (even if some felt ticky tack) — just happened to come at the worst possible time for the Volunteers.

The best way to avoid those types of things from happening moving forward is to simply play more disciplined football. It’s a must if the Vols are going to win out and make the College Football Playoff.