College Basketball Officials Overworked
 

Read an article on Fox Sports website about the crew that worked the Ohio State-Purdue game on Sunday. They had worked the Michigan State-Illinois game the night before with a 9:00 pm tipoff. One of the officials had worked six games in seven days and another had worked five in the same time period. What are your feelings are college officials overworked. According to the article they were off the court Saturday night at 1107, left arena at 1122 and drove halfway. Would they be ready and fresh for the big game Sunday afternoon. Would like to hear some feedback on this.

This topic gets written about every year around this time of the season.

http://forum.officiating.com/basketb...officials.html

Discussed ad nauseum before.

Here and here.

You win this one, APG. :D

It's irrelevant, as far as I'm concerned. If the official does a good job Saturday and a good job Sunday, it's nobody's business (but the Big Ten's assignor's). Certainly not the NCAA's business (or John Adams, either) unless they're willing to hire these guys as full time employees and pay them a salary.

Just something to write about, as always.

If the officials hadn't worked the night before, the story would be something like:

"The officials who worked the (insert game) hadn't worked on two days. Obviously they weren't good enough to work the previous gmaes and were rusty from the layoff. Something needs to be done to ensure the officials are sharp enough."

You only have one chance to make a good first impression.

Like most everyone else here, I have a full time job in addition to officiating. Many a night I put in my 8 or 9 hours at work, get in the car and drive an hour and a half to the game, work a varsity doubleheader, drive an hour and a half home and get in bed at about midnight. Then I get up at 5:30 and go to work the next morning and sometimes head out to another doubleheader somewhere the next night. Nobody seems to complain that I'm overworked, or that every other high school official who does the same thing is overworked.

I believe most of the big time college guys who work 5 or 6 nights a week don't do anything else; it is their job. Most of us work 5 or 6 days a week at our jobs too. Heck, major league baseball umpires work 6 or 7 days a week for 6 months, minus a few weeks of vacation each season. I don't hear anyone complaining about their work hours either. People outside of the profession just like to find ways to criticize officials in my humble opinion.

+1

My neighbor works as a lineman for our local power company.

He has been dispatched numerous times around the country, assisting other locations in the restoration of power after severe weather.

He works 16 hour days, straight until the job is done.

He has yet to hear anyone voice a concern about how rested he is from day-to-day when working such an assignment.

In the end, it's just a freaking basketball game........

Its just a basketball game that lasts 2 hours. When I was in college, I tried to pick up all the games I could over the school break. One year, I hit a favorable tournament schedule after Christmas and worked every day, other than Sunday, for 2 and a half weeks -- 2 games per day. A couple of those days, I worked games in the morning, then at night. Granted, I was 20 something, but I could still do that today with no problem (at least, sans morning/night), if I don't have anything else going on.

During football season, we work 3-4 nights a week plus Saturday while still working FT jobs. Football is outside, hot (early in the season), and longer.