College referees disciplined
 

I always thought this inter web thing was going to cause problems for officials :p

Bradley Batt as in whack, get out?

ruh roh

Yes.

MTD, Sr.

These guys are the envy of so many officials who would love to work 80-100 games and enjoy the game fees and prestige that come along with the turf. I have a feeling we don't know the whole story. The only angles could be: 1. Access to coach evaluations of officials & 2. Seeing officials, their schedules and the accompanying pay they were in line for.

I dealt with a similar situation in a High School association where one of the board members got access and wanted to know who had the best assignments every week. It is nothing more than an ego, jealousy and envy play. At the D1 level there is a lot more cash at stake.

The problem with the story is that as usual, the media only focused on one of the most minor part of the infraction. Honestly, who cares what a coach might say about them. I doubt that was the issue. I bet it was more about getting access to things that were not the business of the individuals like assignments and assignor decisions.

The media really needs to talk to more people that actually officiate, not some reporter that has no idea what officiating is about.

Peace

The reporter didn't focus on the coach rating part of things, he just used it as an example. He mentioned the assignments and financial information as well. The reporter also mentioned that he spoke with an official about the situation off the record. I'm not surprised a working official wouldn't speak on the record about something like this.

He focused mostly on the coach aspect and having an axe to grind if some official had an opportunity to view that information. Not that I could look in and get someone's personal information. And I would not be surprised if there were social security numbers or other personal information that someone would not want to have random people looking at in this manner.

Peace

Problem with that thought is that at nearly every level, officials are told not to speak to the press. Finding that one guy in each organization that is allowed to speak for the group is probably not that easy (or timely), from the reporter's point of view - especially in today's 24-hour news cycle where there are no deadlines... just rushes to report things first.

I work in the media - not for ESPN - and while I agree there's a rush to report things first I don't think this story qualifies. ESPN is the only place with original reporting on this one so no one was breathing down their necks. My guess is they couldn't get many officials to talk.

The value here was the officials could check and see who was getting the big assignments in each conference. They could then compare their schedule with others both in terms of number of games and plum assignments.

You can get the historical data relating to assignments with two mouse clicks
for example:
College Basketball Referees - StatSheet.com

Right, but not future assignments. They were looking at schedules for this year and likely have been doing this for quite awhile.

Probably for a variety of reasons.

I'm guessing there's a lot more to this story than we'll ever know. How did they get access? Who did it? What did they see?

I'm good with not knowing.