Game Management Thought

[Toren]

I have this hypothesis:

At the highest levels of professional sports, officiating becomes less and less about rules and more and more about game management.

In other words, the rules of the game become less important and managing the way these professional athletes play and managing to a certain extent the crowd and managing through communication the coaches all become primary.

I've wondered how easily a transition from one sport to another a referee would make at the highest levels. Would an NBA official be able to transition to NHL (assuming of course the referee could skate) solely based on his management skills? Or an NFL official to FIFA? etc etc.

I'm a relatively new official, so I may be way off base with these thoughts. Do any of the veteran officials have any thoughts on this?