[Andy]

From my experience, availability is not the be all and end all to "moving up", but it is a factor.

I live in a state with two large cities and a large rural area. In the rural areas, there are fewer officials. Some of these officials (in all sports) are working games at a level that they probably would not work if they lived in one of the large cities. The reason is that they are available to work these games in the rural areas. So perhaps these folks are getting some opportunities to be seen and develop that they might otherwise not have due to their availability.