Quote:
Originally Posted by Freddy
On Oct.28, 2007, Nevada posted this:
It is true that the NCAA is returning to the mechanic of the calling official going opposite the table this coming season.
There were two reasons given for this.
1. The coaches were engaging the officials in too many conversations and it was detracting from the flow and speed of the game.
2. The calling official was mostly becoming the Trail and then the Lead on the subsequent trip, so this official was in the most probable location to make another call. (You have to accept that the Lead official makes most of the calls in the 3-person system for this argument to hold water. That assumption may or may not be true.) It was concluded or perceived that the Center official was not participating very much in the game while the other two officials were making the majority of the calls and simply swapping back and forth. There had to be an off-ball call by the Center to get him into the mix and then the new Center was left out for a while. Right or wrong that is the explanation I was given by the top D-1 guys.
What I'm looking for is whatever rationale they published in the CCA manual or communicated in an NCAA bulleting on the topic back in 2007.
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The second reason given expresses something I've noticed happens more freqently than many might realize. Video review and tracking fouls more often than expected shows situations where the foul count is, for instance, 12 for one official, 11 for the other, and 5 for the third official. I've been that third official often enough to have sensed this. It's not that that third official was shy to call fouls or was missing fouls that were happening in his area, its just he spent a lot of time as C opposite table from where he had infrequent opportunities to rotate. This mechanic going opposite table after reporting solves that occasions yet real-to-life situation, spreading opportunities more evenly amongst the crew.