NCAA's "Opposite Table" Rationale

[Mark T. DeNucci, Sr.]

Originally Posted by Freddy

On Oct.28, 2007, Nevada posted this:

It is true that the NCAA is returning to the mechanic of the calling official going opposite the table this coming season.
There were two reasons given for this.
1. The coaches were engaging the officials in too many conversations and it was detracting from the flow and speed of the game.
2. The calling official was mostly becoming the Trail and then the Lead on the subsequent trip, so this official was in the most probable location to make another call. (You have to accept that the Lead official makes most of the calls in the 3-person system for this argument to hold water. That assumption may or may not be true.) It was concluded or perceived that the Center official was not participating very much in the game while the other two officials were making the majority of the calls and simply swapping back and forth. There had to be an off-ball call by the Center to get him into the mix and then the new Center was left out for a while. Right or wrong that is the explanation I was given by the top D-1 guys.

What I'm looking for is whatever rationale they published in the CCA manual or communicated in an NCAA bulletin on the topic back in 2007.

Originally Posted by Nevadaref

I got that information from a D1 guy who has worked two FFs. I can tell you that the NCAA was definitely aware of this issue. I don’t know if they ever publicly stated such in a written memo though.

Go to the 10th comment in the following thread regarding a study done by the SEC:

https://forum.officiating.com/basket...lege-game.html

MTD, Sr.


P.S. In the pre-rotation days of Three-Person Crews, whoever called a Foul would go Opposite the Table and become the new C.