Take officiating away from conferences

[chrisrn1965]

The latest acknowledgement of incompetence by the head of BIG officiating begs the question why are conferences involved in officiating at all? It is clear that at least the BIG conference is incapable of fielding, training, and supervising competent officials. Even if I accept that these were just honest mistakes and not systematic bias it is unacceptable.

Having conferences in charge of officiating is always going to raise issues of conflict of interest. The rules are supposed to be the same regardless of conference so why isn't officiating national and not affiliated with any conference?

 

[kgilbert78]

Aside from concerns about competencies, you see regional differences. One example is basketball--the Big Ten is much more physical and this hurts Big Ten teams in the tourney, most years.

 

[BobPSU92]

Excellent question, though I imagine logistics are a big part of why things are done as they are. Most if not all of the B1G refs live in the midwest, which makes it easier to get them to the different conference venues week to week. That said, if there ever were a movement to have a national crew of refs (no conference affiliations), it would be interesting to see if the B1G (i.e., delany) or any of the coaches in the conference would fight it.