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When the NBA went to the 3 man crew back in the 80's, they completely bypassed the CBA officials and took NCAA officials. They only wanted officials who had worked in front of big crowds of 20,000 or more. Forte had worked the NCAA finals so he and many others were asked. The starting pay for NBA was only 50-75K back then, and many officials were making more than that with their day jobs and were already making an extra 75-100k working D-1 so that would have been a major paycut. Forte had his whistle and the money from that, so he went NBA. Hightower and Clougherty were making more in their day jobs plus the D1 so they turned it down. It did not work out for a few of the college guys (maybe Rusty Herring??).
I feel bad for the CBA guys who had worked so hard to "get the call". Imagine if MLB had only signed up NCAA D1 umpires rather than the AAA guys during their strike of 1999 to those full time jobs. Talk about sticking it up your feader systems (CBA) rear end. What a joke that was.
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