|
My opinion is that Knight has a point, but the way he expresses it is outrageous. Also, his idea that the Big XII should exclusively hire its own officials is not feasible, nor is it really sensible.
Essentially, what Knight wants is a full time staff of officials, similar to what the NBA has, for the Big XII. For each conference to have its own set of full time officials exclusive to the conference is a horrendous idea. It's hard enough the way it currently is where there are multiple supervisors with their own ways of doing things, imagine how differently games could be called if there was no overlap from conference to conference. There is considerable money involved, but the only way that I think it would be possible to employ full time officials is if it were done on a nationwide basis throughout the entire D1 level. Additionally, the salaries that would have to be paid would, on a per game basis, have to be substantially higher.
In terms of whether officials can travel across the country and work 6-7 games a week, that depends on the individual. I think it can be done, but not necessarily at the highest possible level. I don't see how an official can work that many games and still put in the amount of time necessary to prepare to referee and to review tapes and fine tune their performance in order to get it to the peak level. At some level, there definitely has to be a dropoff, particularly if the official also has a day job.
|