|
Tue Feb 14, 2006, 05:57pm
|
|||
|
|||
|
Its a little long, but its the stuff us people who wear striped shirts love to read. John Clougherty confirms that referees cost Virginia Tech a victory against Bowling Green and dismisses charges of favoritism toward Duke. By David Teel Daily Press February 14 2006, 11:43 AM EST In 30 years as a college basketball official, John Clougherty worked hundreds of games in elite conferences such as the ACC and Big East. He earned assignments to 12 Final Fours and four national championship games and concluded his career in a regional semifinal of last season's NCAA tournament. The third of those title games, in 1989, put Clougherty in the crosshairs. His much-debated foul call against Seton Hall's Gerald Greene with three seconds remaining in overtime sent Michigan's Rumeal Robinson to the free-throw line for the decisive points. Clougherty's first season as supervisor of officials in the Atlantic Coast Conference and Colonial Athletic Association has been no less eventful, starting with his appointment in July to replace Fred Barakat, removed from the position after 24 years. The seven months since have included a mistake that cost Virginia Tech a victory, a rare public suspension, injuries to several referees and cries of favoritism toward ACC kingpin Duke. During a telephone interview Monday afternoon with the Daily Press, Clougherty discussed the season to date. Question: I was curious about your scheduling issues this season just given the guys you have lost to injury -- Reggie Cofer in November, Bob Donato earlier this year and Ed Corbett recently. What kind of headaches have these injuries caused? Answer: It's been really difficult. A guy like Reggie Cofer would work 30-plus games for me. Bobby Donato would be 20-plus -- he commits to the Big East first and Eddie Corbett the same way. That's actually not the first injury for (Corbett). He had an earlier injury where I had to take him out of a few games. Then he came back and then he got injured again. And Mike Wood has a stress fracture in his foot that he's been able to get by on. But he had to come out of some games, not a large number, but some. I didn't really need that my first year because the four guys I just mentioned are experienced officials, they're hard to replace -- not hard to replace number-wise, but the experience and quality of games that they all have, you just can't put anybody into those games. So it's been a challenge. Q: How do you fill these gaps? A: That's a very good question. Some of the officials that did not get that level of game, for example, and these are good referees, but they might be working a Southern (Conference) game or a Colonial game, I'll use the name of a guy like Tim Nestor, a Raymie Styons. I would move those fellas up into (the ACC). And of course then you have to fill that (Southern or CAA) spot. We have several guys like that. Roger Ayers is a good referee, Mike Eades is a very good referee. They just don't have the years of experience, but their play-calling is excellent. Q: Since you also supervise the Colonial, that makes it a little easier. But do you risk annoying the Southern and other conferences by taking some of their guys away? A: Yeah, some of the (conferences) won't release (their officials), which is a difficult situation. They have the same problem I do. If Jim Burch, the supervisor of the Southern, releases a guy to me, he then has to fill a spot. So it's a trickle-down effect. Q: How many officials do you have on the ACC roster? A: Sixty-six. Q: And they would range from guys calling upwards of 30 games to a handful? A: That's exactly right. My top guys would get 30 games-plus. With a 12-team league that's reasonable. Then we have new guys that we just brought in who might get five, six, seven games to get their feet wet. No conference games, of course. Q: Has scheduling become the biggest challenge of your first year? A: Um, I would think that's probably accurate. Scheduling, even before we had injuries, for me to come in and make any substantial changes in the roster without giving anybody basically a fair chance, it wouldn't have been right for me to come in and say, 'All right, we're going to reduce the roster by 10 officials and add some new ones.' That just wouldn't have been fair to anybody. So the first year I had to do a lot of evaluating. I go to a great many games, I tape all the games. And there will be more changes as we go forward. Q: You know this better than I, but because of the closeness of the fans to the action, basketball officials become well known to fans and television viewers. It's pretty clear this year that some of the officials we're accustomed to seeing aren't doing as many games. Larry Rose, Duke Edsall, I'm sure there are others. How difficult was it for you to come in and make some changes? On the other hand, did you feel like you had to bring in new blood and put your stamp on it? A: That's getting close to where I might take a pass. I'm certainly here to cooperate with you. You're accurate in saying that those two referees you mentioned you don't see them as much, OK? And you're accurate in saying that I have to give some other referees an opportunity to show what they can do. If I don't give some referees around the league who are refereeing very good and let the coaches see these guys can referee the tough games then they'll never have the confidence they need to have in them. So yes, you may see more of that. I think after 30 years of officiating I have a pretty good idea of who is getting the play calls right, and those referees deserve a chance. And if they don't measure up, there's got to be some other guys who deserve a chance. Q: Last week you announced the one-game suspension of a crew (Mike Eades, Ray Natili and Ed Corbett) for mishandling a technical foul in the Duke-Florida State game. My guess is officials are removed from an assignment or two more frequently than the public ever knows and perhaps more frequently than coaches ever know. Why the public reprimand of this crew? A: Um, the stand that we're taking is we will not comment (further) on the suspensions. Q: In your 30 years of officiating A: Was I ever suspended? No. But I am aware of officials that were suspended and I'm also aware that there's been officials in Division I basketball that have been suspended and it's been public. Q: You had the suspension last week. You had the accidental tip-in at the buzzer that shouldn't have counted in the Virginia Tech-Bowling Green game. Overall, evaluate ACC officiating in your first year. A: I think it's been very good. I think we've had some very difficult games to referee, maybe more so than some other leagues. Every game we have (seems) to be decided by a basket or two. I'm thinking, are we ever going to have a game decided by 20 points? There's just no breathing room. So the referees are constantly in a fishbowl and every mistake they make seems to be magnified. I think they've done really well. We've had a game or two that maybe could have been refereed better. I visit with the referees either by phone or one-on-one after every game and we always go over the mistakes we made. But I'm pleasantly pleased with the level of officiating the ACC has this year, and I would challenge anybody to say we're not getting our percentages right. And basically, that's what we're trying to do. No one's going to have a perfect game and a coach is going to pull out six or seven plays every game if he wants to. Q: You get reports from every game from an observer and from the crew. And do you get a report from the coaches? A: (Laughing) Maybe more often than I want. Immediately after the game the crew chief calls (an answering machine). And the observer calls the same number. So I'm getting two reports within minutes after the game is over, and they'll tell me areas that I might get questioned on, and the crew chief usually has a pretty good idea about what the coaches might come to me with. And I get a DVD or TiVo all the games. So I can, within 24 hours, see the game myself. The coaches, they know how to reach me at any time if they have an issue with the officiating. They don't have a form to fill out (after every game). They do at the end of the season. They've got too much going on to start rating the referees after the game. Q: There has been very public discussion -- magazines, newspapers, the Internet -- about alleged favoritism toward Duke, and Coach K's working of officials and its affect on how a game is called. You worked Duke games. Is Mike Krzyzewski any different than other coaches? And what do you think when you read and hear that Duke gets calls, that Krzyzewski gets calls? A: I'm not going to comment on any of our coaches and any of their sideline behavior. That wouldn't be appropriate for me to do. I will tell you that when there is a large discrepancy in fouls -- it's not uncommon -- it's easy for people to point the finger and say that team is being favored. There's always legitimate reasons that if you look hard enough you can find why one team shoots a large number of free throws. One night Carolina shot 20 more free throws than Clemson did, and the other night Wake Forest and Boston College, Boston College shot 50 free throws and Wake Forest maybe shot 20 (actually 14.). But I didn't see the uproar in those games from the media. You with me? This weekend we'll have games with a huge difference in free throws. I don't believe any of our referees favor any teams, and they have no agendas. They go in and they referee plays, and they try to get plays right. They have no other thoughts. If the end result is one team shooting a large number of free throws, it's because that's the way the game was played. Q: Do more renowned players tend to get more calls? A: I think it works the other way. Absolutely. I think Shaquille O'Neal gets fouled all the time. I think Michael Jordan, as great as he was, went to the line half the number of times he should have because you are making a supreme effort to stop that guy. If you're trying to make the case that a superstar is cut some slack because he is who he is, I'm not sure it's not the other way. I know you'll have a hard time convincing a great many people of that. I can assure you, Michael Jordan, he may have been able to get away with an occasional travel, but when he was going to the hoop, they were fouling him. Q: Just to confirm what (Virginia Tech coach) Seth Greenberg told me last week: The inadvertent tip-in at the buzzer by Tech's A.D. Vassallo that went into the Bowling Green basket should not have counted. Is that correct? A: That is correct, and Seth knows it. He and I have talked at length. The only thing I would say to that is that play happened and those three referees were taken by surprise. In 30 years of officiating, 30 years, I've never seen that play happen and I'm not sure any of those referees will ever see it again. But the fact is, there was an error in that ruling. Q: Were those officials (Ted Valentine, Bernard Clinton and Jeff Nichols) disciplined? A: If they were, it wasn't public. Q: You're less than a year into it. Is this any fun at all? A: It will be a lot more fun when I get through my first year. I certainly don't want to sound like a whiner. I love this job. It came at a perfect time for me. I thought I could make a difference, and I still do, but it's not going to be immediate. This is going to take some time to get some positive results. I think it may take awhile to establish my own roster and be comfortable with the coaches and vice-versa. I would take the job again if it were offered to me tomorrow, but it's a challenge. You just live and die with every game. Q: Referees are independent contractors. You were one. You booked your own schedule. Now that you're on the supervisory end, does it concern you that some of your guys are working too much? A: Yeah. My notable referees all work multiple conferences, and they all work too much, and I worked too much. But I can't even hint about making them cut back. We can talk and I can say, 'You're looking tired. You're not as sharp as you should be.' But I can't tell them, 'If you're going to work four games a week we're not going to be able to use you.' You don't want to start doing that. I think you could get a labor lawyer breathing down your neck. Copyright © 2006, Daily Press
__________________
Failure is fertile ground on which to plant new seeds. 
|
|
Wed Feb 15, 2006, 05:50pm
|
|||
|
|||
|
An announcement from ACC headquarters...
(Greensboro, NC) Atlantic Coast Conference Commissioner John Swofford announced today that a foul is tentatively scheduled to be called against Duke sometime in the first half of their game with UNC in Chapel Hill, next Tuesday, February 7th. In a joint press conference with Duke head coach Mike Krzyzewski, and ACC Director of Officials John Clougherty, Swofford said an agreement had been reached for a touch foul to be whistled on as-yet-to-be-determined Blue Devil player around the 7:00 minute mark during the first half of the game at the Smith Center. "We are very excited to arrange something that hasn't been seen in our conference since 1998," said Swofford. "I want to personally commend Mike {Krzyzewski} for agreeing to this uncoventional deal. We all know how reluctant he has been to allow any calls to go against his team." Krzyzewski insisted that this move was purely a gesture of generosity aimed at rehabilitating his public image in light of recent lip-synching fiascos during several nationally televised games. "The camera did not catch me really uttering the BS-word during my argument with the official the other night. Those really were my lips moving but I wasn't really yelling the word. I'm sure our fans will understand." "Mike is being a really good sport about this," noted UNC coach Roy Williams. "This is a once in a lifetime opportunity to play them with a foul being called against their squad, and to have it happen here in front of the home crowd will be especially enjoyable for our fans." Clougherty says that unless unforeseen intimidation happens during the game, that the scheduled foul should occur without a hitch. "It all depends on whether Coach K holds up his end of the bargain and promises not to harrass our crew that evening." Clougherty also said not to expect any more fouls to be called against Duke this season, but did not rule out the possibility of another one being called in an exhibition game in November 2006. "The Duke AD told me that they are trying to schedule Marathon Oil for a pre-season game next year and we are in discussions about perhaps calling another foul against Duke in that match-up if everyone can come to terms." The officiating crew for the Duke vs. UNC game will not be announced publicly prior to the game in order to protect their privacy. Swofford said he anticipated a media barrage and did not want the referees to be distracted from their big task at hand. "This is a big deal and a momentous occasion for the league. We need our employees to remain focused so that they can complete their jobs in what could end up being a very difficult situation."
__________________
"Golf is deceptively simple and endlessly complicated. It satisfies the soul and frustrates the intellect. It is at the same time rewarding and maddening-it is without a doubt the greatest game mankind has ever invented." Arnold Palmer
|
|
Wed Feb 15, 2006, 07:42pm
|
|||
|
|||
|
Quote:
I love this board.
|
|
Wed Feb 15, 2006, 07:59pm
|
|||
|
|||
|
Great article
thank you for sharing. The followup news brief was totally enjoyable. I guess all refs aren't just good looking, they are humorous and witty, too.
__________________
All of us learn to write in the second grade. Most of us go on to greater things.
|
 |
| Bookmarks |
| Thread Tools | |
| Display Modes | Rate This Thread |
|
|
Linear Mode
