NCAA Officiating - Employees or Contractors?
 

Was reading an article from some newspaper about rough play in the ACC and one of the commentators mentioned that one reason calling physical play is so inconsistent across the country is because each official is an independent contractor not bound by a single organization to train and enforce training/rules, etc (like the NBA).

In terms of consistency, as well as pay and number of games officiated, what is your opinion on the NCAA creating a Division-wide accreditation and assigning body to cover all basketball officials, kind of the way the NBA does it? You get hired by the NCAA, become an employee and make a “salary” and the NCAA governs all of your training, certification, rules interpretation, etc etc.

This is not a discussion of if it will ever happen, but should it.....If it did happen do you think you would see more consistent officiating across the country, especially if, as a result, you had more officials doing different games in different conferences rather than specializing in one or two conferences as they do now....

There is little doubt it would positively contribute to consistency in training and evaluation. I think it would be a positive for the game. It may or may not be a positive for individual officials. Some who currently benefit from the current system would get screwed by that one, and vice versa.

There are tons of other issues with actually implementing it, though, starting with the fact that the NCAA currently doesn't have the authority to do it to the financial implications.

Doubt it ever happens, though I won't be surprised if someday a conference (especially if we end up with "super" conferences of 20+ teams) decides to hire full-time officials.

They pretty much have an informal D-1 accreditation. Most of the top officials work between 3-6 conferences. You make a lower level D-1 conference, and if you are good, you get into higher level conferences. Each conference may or may not be slightly different, but the differences are slight enough that the results are very similar. You can bet that all ACC or other conference games have the same expectations. You can also bet that any of these officials will follow NCAA guidance if they want to work post-season. In that respect it is no different at D-2 or D-3; typically you have the D-1 guys who don't make the NCAA tournament working the lower-level post-season games, and they are evaluated and held to the same standards as the Big Dance.

Guys getting overworked? Maybe. Not being trained in a similar fashion? No. John Adams wants officials that are all the same. That's where it is going for all NCAA officiating.

No it shouldn't happen.

And the part bolded above is not correct. Each conference has a supervisor and the officials in any conference are answerable to the conference supervisor who in turn has to answer to the conference commissioner.

There are 334 D1 basketball programs. Do you really think it feasible for one ogranization to be solely responsible for all the officials needed to covers all the games?

I dunno. That's...you know...why I started the thread. To talk about it.

The IRS would love it! They can make the Authority (whatever it is) withhold Income, Social Security, and Medicare taxes, and be responsible for forwarding them to the IRS quarterly. States could require the Authority to carry Workman's Comp.

That's why, I think, they will remain Independent Contractor's