Forde: Blow the whistle on overworked officials
 

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Blow the whistle on overworked officials

Because The Minutes is basketball-addicted, watching the Iona-Fairfield game late this past Friday night came naturally. So did tuning in the next day at noon for West Virginia-Villanova.

That's when The Minutes noticed something ridiculous: official Brian O'Connell (30) worked both games -- one in Bridgeport, Conn., the other in Philadelphia, with tipoffs just 15 hours and more than 150 miles apart.

This is an approximation of O'Connell's timeline Friday and Saturday:

Work the game at Fairfield, which ended after 11 p.m. ET. The earliest he could have left the arena would figure to be 11:30.

Drive to his home in Middletown, N.J., which Google Maps puts at roughly a two-hour trip. Estimated arrival home: 1:30 a.m. No idea how long it took him to unwind and go to sleep.

Officials are expected to be at the arena at least 90 minutes before tipoff, so O'Connell had to be in the gym in Philly by 10:30 a.m. Driving distance from Middletown is about 90 minutes, which pins his departure from home at no later than 9 a.m.

Assuming O'Connell groomed and ate breakfast, he was probably up by 8. Which gives him a maximum of 6.5 hours of sleep, and quite likely less.

Can a guy adequately perform a physically and mentally demanding job on such a tight turnaround? Yes. But it isn't easy. It opens up the ref to second-guessing if he has a bad game. And -- key part -- this was only part of O'Connell's grind.

Fact is, the WVU-Nova game was O'Connell's fourth in four days, according to Statsheet.com. And, for good measure, he worked another the next day: St. Peter's at Canisius in Buffalo, N.Y. Then he did Manhattan-Iona on Monday in New Rochelle.

That was his 11th game in 13 days. Through Sunday, he has worked 52 games this season.

One of the big problems in college basketball is officials overscheduling themselves all winter, resulting in fatigued refs when the games are their most competitive, contentious and important. They're independent contractors, free to sign up for as many games as they can work -- and most of the good ones will work a ridiculous schedule in search of profit.

John Adams, the admirably candid NCAA supervisor of officials, said O'Connell is "a quality official, a guy I really like." But he didn't like the sound of O'Connell's Friday-Saturday work schedule.

"It feels to me that any more than four games a week, you're probably entering into the law of diminishing returns," Adams said. "And eight hours of sleep before going to work a game would seem to be prudent."

But if O'Connell's schedule sounds crazy, it's relatively sane compared to a recent run by Ted Valentine (31). He's nicknamed "TV Ted" because he's on the air more than Anderson Cooper -- and he likes to make his presence felt. Check out this run:

Works an 8 p.m. ET tipoff at Alabama, Jan. 29. Works a 2 p.m. ET tipoff at Kent State, Jan. 30. Works the next four nights in Jackson, Miss., High Point, N.C., Birmingham, Ala., and Charleston, S.C.

The Minutes has no idea how you even get from Tuscaloosa, Ala., to Kent, Ohio, in time for a 2 p.m. game. Or how TV Ted's work schedule is good for anything but his bank account.

Why does Forde presume that O'Connell went home between the Fairfield and Villanova games?

I would assume O'Connell drove or flew directly to Philly after the Fairfield game and then slept in as late as possible.

Really. It's called a "hotel." Stupid article written by someone who has nothing better to write about.

And I love how they keep going to Adams about all this. It would be like them interviewing the head of my state office to ask her what she thinks of me working 6 varsity games this week or how she feels about me working at 1PM at one school and 7:30PM at another.

This comment just pissed me off.....Most of the good ones work a lot because all of the conference assignors want them to work! I'm sure the D1 money is nice, but I"m also reasonably sure that the money is not the primary motivation for these guys!

Maybe someone should look into how many articles this guy is writing; I think it's too many.

This is where I stopped.

I guess you have to give the monkeys something to read.

Without going into the specifics of the article, haven't we all said something similar? Jeez, how can these guys work 90 games in 120 days with all the driving and air travel in between?

It's a reasonable question to ask whether the schedule and the travel induce enough fatigue to impact performance. The guys in question work that much because somebody feels confident in their performance. But it's not an unreasonable question.

I will agree that some of the assumptions in the article are not warranted.

The only way this is going to change is to make these guys employees and pay them a salary -- something no conference (or the NCAA) has been willing to do.

As someone who is on the bottom rung of a few college conferences I will b!tch and moan to my buddies about this. But then I look at my HS schedule and notice and me and a 3 or 4 other guys are always working the "big" games when we are available. Or how me and a D1 guy are working a run-of-the-mill private school game this Friday when our board only has 2-3 games to cover.

The problem isn't really the major (BCS) conferences over-working these guys. It's that the mid-majors and D2/D3 conferences want to work these guys every chance possible. So if Teddy V has an open date you can be rest assured that the Southern Conference and SWAC are going to utilize his services.

Check out the boxscores for the A-Sun or Southern or Sun Belt on days when the Big 6 don't have games.

I wonder if that is what happened to Billy Packer?

Use some common sense? And develop new officials at the same time?

Blasphemy! Blasphemy, I tell ya.

Next thing you know somebody might come up with the dumb idea of also maybe using the senior guys as trainer/evaluators on their rest days if they actually were salaried. Get 'em out doing that in the smaller conferences. Maybe get a further positive return on their knowledge and experience. Naw, that'll never happen.

Or put stipulations in the contracts about activities permitted during a specified time frame before the game.

This would work, but only once all conferences do it. The Big 12 (for example) isn't going to be the first to essentially limit guys when the big dogs would then be incentivized to say, "Thanks, but no thanks, B12. I'll just go work B10/SEC games on those days and still be able to work MVC/Southland/Sun Belt/Whatever the night before."

While only those officials with real clout could pull it off (because they'd get hired in any of those conferences), they are the ones the rules are written for.

Assumptions may have been avoided with one simple sentence: "Calls to Mr. O'Connell were not returned."

Yes, officials don't talk to the media, especially D-I officials, and I'm sure the author knew this. Still, had the author made an attempt to contact the subject and tell him the reason for the piece, and the subject declined comment, at least the author said he made an attempt. Without an attempt, such assumptions are more difficult to accept.

Whats the numbers mean next to their names?