Conference Officials?

[PaREF]

I was listening to a local sports talk show today and the host was talking about the University of Pittsburgh's chances in the NCAA tournament. He was concerned that Pitt's big man (I forget his name) would get into foul trouble because they would be seeing non-Big East officials at the tournament. In his expert opinion he thought that Big East officials let the players get away with a lot of contact and officials from other conferences would not be so lax in enforcing the rules.

A caller tried to convince him that officials were officials and that most officials who work D1 will call pretty much the same game. But as I said the host is an expert in all things sports-related and he was adamant that each conference had its own stable of officials and each conference differed in how much contact was allowed.

I don't know for sure but it seems like many officials work for more than one conference. I was just curious if D1 officials usually only work in one conference or if they work for several?

Oh, and just to show demonstrate this guy's immense knowledge of all things sports-related, he said after the Rose Bowl that part of the reason Penn State lost to USC was because JoePa coached from the press box which gave Pete Carrol an advantage. The advantage was that Carrol could "work the officials", hence USC got all of the close calls.