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1) Are you a current member of the SEC staff?
2) How does the SEC track your development? Do they assign you games at the college level-- i.e. junior college, D1,2,3 etc- and evaluate your progress at those games?
3) What ongoing training is the SEC providing you with? Who is responsible for your training- an SEC staff member?
4) How does one qualify to become a member of the SEC development program? Are you scouted and then asked to join? Iow, what are the requirements and qualifications needed to enter the program?
5) Is there a certain experience level required before you would be entered--i.e. regular season varsity high school experience for a certain number of years, state high school play-off appointments,small college schedule, etc?
6) Does this program actually assign games to you? At what levels?
1) No. One gets invited to an SEC camp (usually IIOC, but you could leap-frog to Orlando or Vegas, as a buddy of mine did). From there, you are evaluated for entry into the program. It is similar to most college gigs. You get a few games in a particular conference your first year. If you handle yourself well, your schedule will be a little nicer the next year and you may pick up another league or two. (There are about seven or eight conferences under the SEC umbrella, ranging from NAIA to D1) Over a period of time, you have the opportunity to work your way up. For instance, the guys who got picked up by the SEC this year and worked non-conference games for them have been in the program about 7 years or so. They started with NAIA ball such as the Peach Belt or Florida Sun and worked their way up through the A-Sun and OVC as well.
2) When you work in the conferences under the SEC umbrella, you will always end up on someone's game film and it will get back to Guthrie and the other supervisors. Also, the SEC has observers that show up unannounced to do evaluating.
3)We underwent extensive training at IIOC. We spent about four hours on the first night alone just going through a glossary of terms that the SEC and NBA use in talking about plays. Also, we watched a lot of game film at camp. Once you are working games in their conferences, there are weekly training tapes that must be watched at the game site by the crew as one means of pre-gaming. You are also expected to watch and break down every game tape that you are a part of.
4/5) One must be reccomended by someone who is already in the program. I am fortunate that I was something of a mentor to an individual and he got to know a current SEC official, who got him to an SEC camp. The next year (this summer) he passed the blessing on to me. So outside of the reccomendation, there are no qualifications for IIOC. Were they to put something in place in terms of an experience requirement, it would be a shame. If you disagree, look at folks like Leroy and Zach Zarba. Zach, for one, has not even been officiating for 10 years and he is in the NBA. That has a lot to do with the fact that Coach Guthrie gave him a shot when he did not have a lot of experience. Leroy (current NBA referee) did not have hardly any experience when he first went to a camp and caught the eye of Hank Nichols and some others. He was still pretty 'green' when he was brought to Coach Guthrie's attention as a prospect.
6) The SEC umbrella assigns games all the way from NAIA to DI. As all of us that went to IIOC this year, I am just hoping for a foot in the door and an invite back there next year.
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