Just Another Day at the Office.

Maybe in the SWAC, the home school is responsible for hiring officials if it's a non-conference game?

[biz]

It was my understanding that at the DI level...especially the major programs...that a non-conference contract to play a game or a series of games specifies a lot of things. One thing is guaranteed money (which is mentioned in the article) and usually there is a deal on splitting the gate, and one of the things that the coaches try to write in is officials. Sometimes they just agree on something as simple as a crew assigned by the visiting team's conference, but other times they have a specific list of officials that are acceptable to both teams and the home team is responsible for securing them (usually through the host school's conference assignor)

This process was written about (briefly) in Season on the Brink, the John Feinstein book that spent a season with Indiana and Bob Knight.

Originally Posted by biz

This process was written about (briefly) in Season on the Brink, the John Feinstein book that spent a season with Indiana and Bob Knight.

And how old is that book? A lot has changed since then. Back when that book was written, a certain NAIA conference that I have knowledge of wouldn't dare go near the subject of scheduling officials for their member schools. All within the four years I was in school, we went from that to having a coordinator of officials who assigned all games for basketball and volleyball and was moving towards doing so for football, and a couple years after I graduated, it went towards soccer, baseball, and softball. Which is why the SWAC's stance in this article puzzles me a bit, but some of the rationales offered on the board makes some sense.