Officiating in the PAC

[coolconman]

Well darn, i thought it was clear that the officiating in the pac 10 was substandard...Why do the refs have to be so unbeliavably eager to blow their whistles? especially for obscure violations that usually do not even take place. Advice: refs need to think before blowing their whistle. everytime someone shoots in the paint does not necessarilly mean that there has to be a foul called

[Lotto]

Originally posted by coolconman
Well darn, i thought it was clear that the officiating in the pac 10 was substandard...Why do the refs have to be so unbeliavably eager to blow their whistles? especially for obscure violations that usually do not even take place. Advice: refs need to think before blowing their whistle. everytime someone shoots in the paint does not necessarilly mean that there has to be a foul called

Yawn.

[BktBallRef]

Originally posted by coolconman
Well darn, ..................yahta,.......................... .............................yahta,............... .....................................yahta........ ...................... a foul called

Who gives a $hit? Not us.

Go back to your bridge, troll.

[coolconman]

of course you don't give a $hit... thats why there will never be any improvement, and the fans and players in the pac will continue to suffer.

[JRutledge]

Originally posted by coolconman
Advice: refs need to think before blowing their whistle. everytime someone shoots in the paint does not necessarilly mean that there has to be a foul called

Why not throw your hat in the ring and become an official. Then you can tell us after a few games how much we think or do not think. Then come back here and tell us how easy it is to call basketball games. You seem to know everything, so why not join the ranks for some Junior High games and tell us little inexperienced officials what we do not know.

Peace

[tomegun]

I have three friends (a word I don't use lightly) that currently work in the PAC-10, one of which is my mentor and someone I'm very close with in all aspects of life. My last summer in Vegas, 2002, I was invited to the PAC-10 camp. The PAC-10 invites 12 officials to their camp and the U1s and U2s work also. The games are played by JC teams from California. At the meetings PAC-10 business is handled which is different from other camps since there are only 12 "outsiders" in the room. The PAC-10 staff is the premier conference on the west coast and the staff is made up of strong officials such as:
Dave Libby (I think 7 Final Fours)
Charlie Range (I think 6 Final Fours)
Dick Cartmel (worked a championship game in the past 5 years)
Verne Harris (04 championship game)
Mark Reisling
Bill Kennedy
Bruce Hicks
Michael Irving (on the NBA radar)

and many others to include losing two guys to the NBA this season.
I was blessed to be in a position to be there and it is not an ego thing. I can say for certainty that the PAC-10 tries very hard to do what Hank Nichols wants done. Period. If the original poster wants to put his money where his mouth is then there are opportunities to not only begin officiating but go to the camps where you can work towards earning an invitation (this is a true invitation to the camp in Walnut Creek with $0 out of pocket expenses) to the PAC-10 camp. It would have been much wiser to single out an individiual rather than a whole conference. The facts are every conference has someone in it that isn't as strong as others. That will probably remain until the end of time or politics, which ever comes first. By doing this the poster indirectly criticized the staff of the WAC, Big 12, Conference USA, Mountain West, WCC, Big Sky and Big West. As a whole the PAC-10 is good.

[Almost Always Right]

I am a tad confused - If you do not officiate, how can you comment(in good conscience) about the officiating, in any league?
Simply because you watch games, regardless of number of games watched or proximity to the court, does not mean you have any idea what is trying to be done out there.
If you knew what we have to go through to get NCAA assignments, there is no way that we are going to go out and purposely blow too many whistles or not enough whistles.
One lesson for you here - We call what the game gives us according to directives from the conference(s). This is a very elementary explanation and there are many shades of gray to go with this but it doesn't seem like you would care about the intricacies nor do I desire to try to explain them to you.
Advice - Throw on some stripes and try to get one call right.
Comment - I have never missed one from the bleachers either.
AAR

[Back In The Saddle]

First of all, the higher up the ladder an official goes, the more he or she is scrutinized, evaluated and assessed. The folks who work major college basketball get evaluated constantly.

You are obviously unhappy with the "quality" of the officiating in the PAC-10. You assume, or so it seems from the nature of your questions, that the officials are some gang of loose cannons with their own agenda. Considering the amount of money involved, hundreds of millions of dollars per year, what on earth makes you think that the PAC-10 would hire ANY official that isn't willing to do what the conference wants? Do you think their supervisor of officials is some milktoast figurehead, with no actual power or ability to affect how games are officiated? Do you believe the conference deliberately chose such a person? Do you believe the schools involved would allow such a situation to exist?

Hell no! The officials who work in the PAC-10 worked their tails off to get there. The supervisor of officials has literally hundreds of thousands of officials he could choose from. He chooses only those that he feels can do the job. He keeps only those that actually do. If you do not like the way the game is played in the PAC-10, don't stupidly assume that it's the renegade officials who are screwing it up. These are some of the best in the world, and they don't get there or stay there without calling the game the way the league wants it called.

Question for you, BTTB. What color is the cover of the NCAA rulebook this year? Do you know? Have you even seen it? Have you ever read it? It's available online, you really should go get it and read the entire thing. Let me give you a challenge: look up the rules on over-the-back and reaching in. Come back here and lets discuss them.

Most fans know very little about the rules of the game, even the articulate ones. What's worse, they don't even realize it. I'll let you in on a little secret, TV and radio commentators don't know much about the actual rules either. They get paid to look and sound good and get good ratings. If you're turning to them for your rules knowledge, you are getting nothing more than entertainment mixed with dubious information. Worse, most fans don't even care. They don't want to know. They want to the game to be the way they want it to be and their eyes get all glazed over when you tell them what the rule really says.

They get their ignorant thrills yelling "three seconds" anytime they see an opponent in the lane. The times I hear this the loudest are the times when the fans are most wrong about it. They don't know whole rule. They get angry, upset even livid and they are just flat out wrong. Just a hint, you can't have three seconds during a throw-in, when the ball is in back court, or during rebounding.

The ones who have advanced beyond three seconds usually jump on the traveling bandwagon next. Whenever an opponent does anything that looks unusual, an ignorant chorus of "traveling" erupts from the bleachers. And they are usually wrong. The three seconds rule is simple compared to the traveling rule. Just a hint, there is no "two step" rule, you cannot travel without having control, and a skilled, athletic player can quicly make an awful lot of movement without traveling.

The mere concept of advantage/disadvantage is entirely too much for most fans. A foul is defined as illegal contact that puts an opponent at a disadvantage or gains a player an illegal advantage. It's ALL about advantage/disadvantage. If it doesn't matter to the game (not the same as mattering to a fan), the officials should let it go. If a player can reasonably be expected to play through the contact without being disadvanted, the official should let it go. Oh, and notice the statement about illegal contact, there is a lot of contact that IS legal. You can even have severe contact that is completely legal.

And don't get me started on the "call it both ways" ignoramouses. You fans absolutely don't want it called both ways. You want it called your way. Only. All the time. And that, my dear friend BTTB, is the heart of the problem. The officials don't give a rats *** about you or your team. They don't care what you think, feel or believe. Not even a little bit. They can't. Because if they did, they would be biased.

You seem dismayed that your attempts at civil dialogue about why the PAC-10 officials are terrible have met with unfriendly response. It's because those of us who have put in the time and effort to understand how to officiate the game readily recognize your complete ignorance. It is obvious. It's like a flashing neon sign. You're here for one reason and one reason only: to find support for your opinions. That's completely disingenuine. Oh, I suppose that you may actually have some kind of pipe dream about changing our minds about how the game should be called. Well, that's more of an acid trip, really.

So if you truly want to engage in a dialogue with us on the subject, you've got one of two choices: You can put aside your bias, admit your ignorance (to yourself most of all), and attempt to learn what it's really about from folks who have collectively devoted thousands of years of study and practice (that would be the folks here). Or, better yet, seek out your local officials association, don the stripes, learn the rules, pass the test and gain the experience. I guarantee you that if you'll do that, you will change your ignorant tune.

[drothamel]

Back In The Saddle--

Well said.

[DB084]

a big bump

the pac 10 officiating was pretty dreadful 5 years ago....i think there has been a decent improvement in the last couple years.

Dave Libby is absolutely terrible.

[Jurassic Referee]

Originally Posted by DB084

a big bump

the pac 10 officiating was pretty dreadful 5 years ago....i think there has been a decent improvement in the last couple years.

Dave Libby is absolutely terrible.

And your qualifications to make such a statement are:
1) current NCAA D1 official
2) current NCAA D1 assignor
3) current NCAA D1 evaluator
4) fat-azzed fanboy sitting in La-Z-Boy who's never officiated a game in their life.
5) other.

If "other", please tell us your officiating background.

Just wondering. Also wondering why you brought this up a year plus later.

Also, why is Dave Libby so terrible? From an officiating standpoint?

[Jimgolf]

The fans in the Pac 10 have been going downhill lately. I understand that they watch re-runs on Fox Pacific,complain about the officiating on last year's games, and open old threads on officials bulletin boards.

Whatever happened to the creative Stanford and Cal fans that used to pull those crazy stunts on each other?

[tomegun]

Besides the age of this thread, Dave Libbey is a great official. Sure, he has probably seen better days, but he tries to do right by the game. Some fans might have a problem with him because he doesn't bow down to anybody. One official from the east coast went so far as to say Libbey is the only official from the west that he would work with, given the choice.

[BktBallRef]

Originally Posted by Jurassic Referee

And your qualifications to make such a statement are:
1) current NCAA D1 official
2) current NCAA D1 assignor
3) current NCAA D1 evaluator
3) fat-azzed fanboy sitting in La-Z-Boy who's never officiated a game in their life.
4) other.

I'll put a year's salary on #3.

[M&M Guy]

Originally Posted by BktBallRef

I'll put a year's salary on #3.

Which number 3?