Tomegun

[Iknownevada]

Like I said, football has a system in place that most of the up and coming officials have, the officials that have talent and want to move up go to camp together during the summer. Some of the clinicians are high profile Vegas football officials such as Mark Ratner and Mark Perlman (NFL) and those officials that go to camp are talked about to the supervisors by those two mentioned officials. They get a really good look from those who are hiring at the small college level. Once any of those get hired for the JC or D3-D2 level they are mentored and brought along by the D1 refs and the NFL official. If they have some really good seasons and have openings at the D1 level they usually get a good look at being hired. That is why there are 1-2 football officials being hired at the D1 level almost every year now, the system is in place for up and coming talented officials to get hired.

Basketball is a complete different situation. There is no system in place. If you want to move up as an official you are on your own which is why there has only been two new hires out of Vegas at the mens D1 level in about the last 12 years. Vegas has some talented officials that could work college ball and possibly D1 but the system that I talked about is lacking. The serious looking to move up go to camp every summer and I know there are a few that still travel to California and Utah to work games. If you are from Vegas it is harder to move up because of the lack of colleges, but with no system in place from the higher levels they will continue to struggle to move up. Being in Vegas is so much harder to move up than most parts of the country because of the casino stigma but if there was a really strong system in place Vegas would have some more D1 officials being hired.

[Ohioref3]

I think that different parts of the country have different mentoring programs rather it be in the east coast or the west coast. Like Tomegun said earlier the officials that are coming up have to want to be mentored and taught the right way. Some officials feel like they have all the answers but there are alot who really want to progress and move up but don't exactly know the right process to do it and thats where the officials that are in the nba, nfl, D1 or any high level conference have to lend some advice to those officials. Simple advice can be on what camp to attend, what the supervisors are looking for, and the steps that those officials took to get to where they are.