Quote:
Originally Posted by PaREF
I was listening to a local sports talk show today and the host was talking about the University of Pittsburgh's chances in the NCAA tournament. He was concerned that Pitt's big man (I forget his name) would get into foul trouble because they would be seeing non-Big East officials at the tournament. In his expert opinion  he thought that Big East officials let the players get away with a lot of contact and officials from other conferences would not be so lax in enforcing the rules.
A caller tried to convince him that officials were officials and that most officials who work D1 will call pretty much the same game. But as I said the host is an expert in all things sports-related and he was adamant that each conference had its own stable of officials and each conference differed in how much contact was allowed.
I don't know for sure but it seems like many officials work for more than one conference. I was just curious if D1 officials usually only work in one conference or if they work for several?
Oh, and just to show demonstrate this guy's immense knowledge of all things sports-related, he said after the Rose Bowl that part of the reason Penn State lost to USC was because JoePa coached from the press box which gave Pete Carrol an advantage. The advantage was that Carrol could "work the officials", hence USC got all of the close calls. |
Both Parties are somewhat correct....
Conference commissioners will have certain things that they want done in their conference. However, contact is not one of them. Most are mechanical type things i.e. How to handle double whistles in the paint, signal of 3 pt. attempt etc.
Conferences do hire a staff of officials. There will be newbies that will only work pre conference games. There will be 3 - 4 year veterans of the conference that will call the perceived lower level conference games. Some conferences have different tiers of officials. Pay is the big difference. Missouri Valley has three levels, $2500 for top tier and bottom tier is about $1200. Do not quote me on this.
Some conferences have agreements and work together. SEC, ACC, Big South, Southland, etc used to work on developing new officials. They all started in the mid majors and below at the D1 level. They would gradually move up to BCS level conference. Curtis Shaw is a perfect example of this. He started college b-ball via camps and rapidly moved up from Ohio Valley and Southland into SEC, ACC etc.
The top 100 officials will work in multiple conferences. They also have some dues to pay. For example, Hightower still works Mo Valley and I am sure that he feels some allegiance for Mo Valley getting him started in D1.
The rocky moutains do a pretty good job of separating officials geographically. None of the east coast big timers work the west coast and vice versa. Go to the website mentioned above and you can see that.
My $.02