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The official that works the NFL and is from down in Vegas is Mark Perlman. There is a great story behind him, he has been an official with SNOA for about 25 years, and worked his way up through high school, D1, NFL Europe, and finally the NFL. He just completed his first NFL season when he ran into some health problems and had to take a year off to take care of those concerns and had to work his way back through NFL Europe and then back to the NFL and was hired to work on Mike Carey's crew the past few seasons. He works the linejudge postion in the NFL and had the chance to work this past seasons Super Bowl in Detroit. He also has been one of Vegas's big supporters in getting good looks for the local officials and has mentored pretty much every D1 football official that Vegas has.
I was reading the prior post on mentoring officials in Vegas and between Mark Perlman and Mark Ratner, comissioner of officials and outgoing boxing commisioner for the state of Nevada, the football officials have gotten good recomendations and looks from the Supervisors. I think basketball has struggled in that department because the officials have not really had a great mentoring program and D1 officials that could show the dedicated up and coming officials the ropes and get recomendations for those officials to the college supervisors. I think if the basketball officials had some D1 officials from the area really take them under their wing and not only teach but let the supervisors in the college conferences know Vegas has some good talented officials looking to move up and get hired it would help those officials out.
Look at Phoenix, with a population of around 3 million people there, they have so many officials working D1, NBA, WNBA, and small college ball and from talking to a few refs that live down there, the officials that have made it that far really give back and help out the other officials from that area. They put on camps, evaluate at high school games, really give back to those refs that are trying to get to the next level and that is what it takes if you want a successful area of officials. Like I said, football in Vegas has the system in place where 1 to 2 guys are geting hired every year on the D1 side in football and only 2 officials have been hired on the D1 side in mens basketball the past 15 years. It all goes back to contacts and the mentoring program that was talked about by a few prior posters on this subject.
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