Taking Care of Business: Reliability & Results in Officiating - Sample Chapter

30TH ANNUAL

SPORTS OFFICIATING

TAKING CARE OF BUSINESS: RELIABILITY & RESULTS IN OFFICIATING

SUMMIT2012

TAKING CARE OF BUSINESS

RELIABILITY & RESULTS IN OFFICIATING

FROM THE NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF SPORTS OFFICIALS

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Contents Introduction....................................................................................... 8 Chapter 1: Improving the Officiating ROI...................................... 11 • Identifying 10-times performers and 20-mile marchers.

• Channeling fear to aid performance.

Chapter 2: How the Media is Changing Officiating....................... 16 • Officiating in the age of Twitter, YouTube and instant replay.

• The officiating perspective gets a voice on national TV.

Chapter 3: Officiating Insurance: What and Who is Covered............................................................... 25 • The difference between liability and general insurance.

• Coverage provided to NASO members.

Chapter 4: Seven Things You Need to Know About Game Contracts.................................................................... 33 • Perspective from a legal expert.

• What the parties involved in a contract must do.

Chapter 5: Command Center.......................................................... 41 • Making game-related decisions from afar.

• How the technology has changed over the years.

Chapter 6: Being a Crew Chief in Life............................................. 46 • Taking the bullets when necessary.

• Thinking as a crew, not an individual.

Chapter 7: It’s About the Money..................................................... 55 • Survey provides key information.

• What are an official’s services really worth?

Chapter 8: Large Associations: How Business Gets Done............. 65 • State associations working with statewide officiating associations.

• Working together to establish rules and policies.

Chapter 9: Are We Taking Care of Business?.................................. 75 • When technology is not an option.

• Officials learning from their mistakes.

Chapter 10: The New Architecture of Officiating Administration.............................................................. 84 • Going from the field to the front office.

• Bringing the officiating department up to date.

Contents continued on next page.

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Conclusion........................................................................................ 95 Appendix One.................................................................................. 96 Session List

Appendix Two................................................................................100 Speaker Directory

Appendix Three.............................................................................111 Vendor List

Appendix Four...............................................................................117 Summit Support Organizations

The NASO Sports Officiating 2012 Summit, with the theme of “Taking Care of Business: Reliability & Results in Officiating� served as the basis for this book, supplemented by material published in Referee magazine and a variety of NASO publications, as well as information gathered from previous NASO Summits.

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2 How The Media Is Changing Officiating

In This Chapter ... • Officiating in the age of Twitter, YouTube and instant replay. • The officiating perspective gets a voice on national TV.

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HOW IS CHANGING OFFICIATING HOW MEDIA ISMEDIA CHANGING OFFICIATING

J

ohn Higgins knows all about the power of media.

“I had a game this past year,” he said. “I had to eject the coach, and before the game was done, I had five or six (messages) from people that my plays were on YouTube.”

Kevin Weiberg is thrilled that instant replay helps improve officiating. But the mass distribution and availability of information via technology has resulted in what Weiberg calls an unintended consequence.

“This enhanced video that’s available and the instant look at every play has created a mind-set among fans,” Weiberg said.

“We see it in terms of the conference office — the feedback we get from fans instantaneously. There’s this expectation that officiating can be perfect in some way, shape or form or maybe should be perfect, and that’s to me sort of the detrimental part of it.”

Lest you think YouTube, Twitter and electronic and the print media are concerns only at the upper levels, take note of the comments of Jack Roberts.

“The trouble is the audience. The fans accustomed to the college and the professional level have not the same expectation that we who work in the trenches have about it,” Roberts said. “We just don’t have the same resources. And while our fans might have gotten expectations like the college and professionals, we who work in it know that we will sometimes not get them right, and that’s a reality of the high school level.”

Mike Pereira sees it from yet another perspective. He resides on the business side of a camera, dispensing information and opinions about calls. With experience on the field, in the studio and in the front office, he has far more expertise than the casual YouTube poster or tweeter. Pereira is concerned about the type of information (and misinformation) that is being alternately spewed and gobbled up by the public.

“This is a fascinating time for officiating,” he said. “Because of the media and the social media. And there’s no going back. I mean nobody is going to take away Twitter, nobody is going to take away Facebook. It’s even going to become more broad, and there’s going to be more idiots out there hiding behind the shade of knowing that nobody will expose who they are that will say things that are absolutely inappropriate and saying it without any knowledge base at all.”

The effect of media — social as well as print and electronic — on officiating was examined during a session at the 2012 NASO Sports Officiating Summit in Portland, Ore. NASO President Barry Mano moderated a panel discussion featuring Higgins, a resident of Omaha, Neb., who has officiated men’s basketball for more than 25 years; Weiberg, Pac-12 Conference deputy commissioner and chief operating officer; Roberts, Michigan High School Athletic Association (MHSAA) executive director; 17

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TAKING CARE OF BUSINESS TAKING CARE OF BUSINESS and Pereira, former NFL vice president of officiating and current Fox Sports analyst.

View from the Top People who do what Weiberg and Roberts do are often placed between a rock and a very hard place. Leaders have to support

THE APPLE OF ADAM’S EYE

The Apple of Adams’ Eye From a control room in Atlanta, Big Coordinator is watching. And listening.

John Adams, NCAA national coordinator of men’s basketball officiating, is able to watch every moment of March Madness from a room equipped with enough video equipment to make a sports fan drool.

Last spring, when controversy erupted in a couple of games, Adams was able to review the plays. So when the media came calling, he was ready to comment.

For instance, when Notre Dame’s Jerian Grant was called for a lane violation in the waning seconds of a close game with Xavier, Adams knew the officials had reacted correctly. Same with a call the day before when North Carolina-Asheville’s J.P. Primm stepped into the free throw lane before Syracuse’s Scoop Jardine released the ball.

It isn’t unusual for Adams to receive phone calls from announcers during breaks in games they are covering in order to explain the intricacies of a block/charge, basket interference or other call — anything that analyst Charles Barkley might label as “turrrible, just turrrible.”

The control center is part of Adams’ effort to keep his finger on the pulse of what is going on during the most high profile games. But his contact with the media begins long before the tournament starts.

“I started (as national coordinator) the day after (the) 2008 Final Four,” Adams said. “I purposely reached out to key members of the media to talk to them about our business and our rules and our initiatives and where we wanted the business to go.”

Adams said he met for four hours with on-air personnel at ESPN and CBS to explain rules, mechanics and other aspects of officiating.

“The media, whether we like it or not, shapes all the perceptions about our business,” Adams said. “And to treat them as the enemy or as somebody we don’t need to talk to, I think — and fortunately for me the folks at the NCAA feel the same way — is a big mistake. You’d rather have these people understand what you’re doing and like what you’re doing than to be on the outside taking potshots because they can’t get a straight answer. So that’s how I’ve chosen to handle the media.”

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HOW IS CHANGING OFFICIATING HOW MEDIA ISMEDIA CHANGING OFFICIATING officials in the face of intense criticism from the media and the public. But that mustn’t be done in such a way to insult the intelligence of or antagonize the people who support the leagues, conferences, teams and schools with their loyalty and dollars.

“So you have officials whose calls are more highly scrutinized than probably ever before and particularly by people who don’t really have a clue about what (officials do) to prepare, the rules of the game itself,” Weiberg said. ”And yet at the same time, all of us on the business side, we love to have these communities of passionate and excited people who are following the sport. It creates a lot more pressure on everyone involved in the system, I think.”

Roberts knows social media isn’t going away. In fact, the MHSAA is trying to take advantage of it by turning it into income.

“We’re involved with social media and trying to utilize it as an association and hopefully trying to monetize that,” he said.

Yet Roberts knows there are risks as well.

“In social media, we also have the seed for things to go bad,” Roberts said. “We know we need to monetize it if we can, but we know it’s going to create some problems for us as well. As I look at the last three years of my association, one of the worst experiences we’ve had in the last three years has been social media-generated.”

Ironically, the situation to which Roberts refers involves not an angry fan, but an official who operated a blog on and posted information on games he worked. Problem was, he provided details and commentary about coaches, teams and players. The MHSAA adopted a policy that officials could electronically discuss general officiating topics but not the sort of specifics the official in question was posting.

Making the Calls Higgins said that in the days before the scrutiny of officials was so intense, the men and women in stripes could loosen up a bit. No more. As he put it, “We have to call it the way it is because everybody is going to see right or wrong no matter what. You just can’t B.S. your way through anything anymore because every single call is scrutinized. Once in a while we’d do that. But with the media now … .”

When it comes to the media and officiating, the 5,000-pound elephant in the room is missed calls. The media at times seems to relish officiating errors because it gives them an opportunity to stir the pot.

“There’s a human element to the game that’s very important, always has been, needs to remain that way,” Weiberg said. “We need the ability through the same media platforms to make sure that we’re doing a good job of educating some of our on-air 19

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TAKING CARE OF BUSINESS TAKING CARE OF BUSINESS talent … about what are the expectations here and how hard is it to make those kind of split second judgments.”

Weiberg said the Pac-12 tries to avoid publicly acknowledging judgment-related errors. “That’s the job of our evaluation program, that’s the job of our supervisors,” he said.

“However, we have been willing to step out and make comments regarding rules administration situations,” Weiberg added. “To me, that’s the dividing line. If you have an incorrectly administered situation inside a game, sometimes you have to take action in a more public way. The public expects the commissioner’s office to be in a position to be the fair arbiter of the rules. To the extent we have an obvious situation, it just doesn’t match up with the way the game should have been administered. I think you have to do it.”

In the case of an administrative as opposed to judgment error, Higgins agrees with Weiberg. “If you don’t (acknowledge) those that are pretty obviously incorrect … it’s going to linger for weeks,” he said. “There is a way to put it to bed by sometimes just having to say we’re incorrect.

“I think you can’t be insulated anymore, and you also just can’t come out and say we were right every time,” Higgins continued. “If you’re going to do that you’re going to have zero credibility in the eyes of the people that are out there watching.

Sometimes you have to admit it, and you can usually pick your spots where it’s really pretty obvious and you can make the statement. And you know if you don’t like it because it was you tough luck, tough luck. You made a mistake that you shouldn’t have made. I think fans deserve that now.”

That’s Entertainment Pro and collegiate sports are still mostly about who wins and who loses. But as collegiate conferences launch their own networks and coverage continues to expand, the ratings are almost as important as the final score. And officials are part of “the show.”

“The game has become, even at the collegiate level, much more of an entertainment product, particularly in the highprofile sports,” Weiberg noted. “There are opportunities, through folks like Mike and those who have knowledge about officiating, to be able to tell the story in a way that communicates to this big audience that we’re generating around these games,” Weiberg said.

Last season ESPN added retired NBA referee Steve Javie to its cadre of analysts. Javie was called upon a number of times during the playoffs to unravel a complicated situation. In the last few seasons, either a conference coordinator, active official or officiating observer has been utilized during telecasts of college bowl games to explain finer points, either on the air or relayed to 20

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HOW IS CHANGING OFFICIATING HOW MEDIA ISMEDIA CHANGING OFFICIATING the announcers. The MHSAA uses officials in the same way on state tournament telecasts.

Telecasts are being enhanced in other ways as well. What was said on the court or field used to be a mystery to the viewing public. Today more and more officials are wearing microphones that allow fans to hear in-game conversations. In most cases the audio is presented on a delayed basis to ensure the verbiage is fit for public consumption. As a result, officials are finding themselves in the spotlight far more than in bygone days. “(Networks realized they’ve) got all these ex-coaches and … all these ex-players and we don’t have an official,” Pereira said, describing the evolution of the officiating analyst’s role. “People are so invested in the game now that it made sense to bring on an official.”

How Far is Too Far? The media and certainly fans seem to appreciate the “inside information” being provided by analysts and informed parties.

Still, they crave more. When a bizarre or controversial play occurs, the media often wants one of the officials to explain the process by which the officials arrived at the call. But virtually all high school associations and most collegiate conferences have strict “gag rules” preventing officials from answering questions.

The pro leagues also limit how much contact media may have with officials.

“During the regular season, there’s no set policy per se that we’re going to talk to any media people after the game. Basically, unless somebody from the conference office says you can speak … but never about a judgment, only about a rule interpretation,” Higgins said, adding that the NCAA allows a brief comment period after tournament games.

Social media brings it own restrictions. Roberts, for one, stepped up and had his state implement a policy to curtail the use of blogs, Twitter, Facebook and other forms of communication by officials. Weiberg, for another, thinks that’s a good idea.

“It would be tempting to be able to be out there making your own comments about plays good and bad,” he said. “But I don’t think it’s really a realistic expectation in the modern sort of media world because the snowball effect of it would be unending.”

The door does swing both ways, however. The Pac-12 is on the lookout for coaches and players making derogatory comments about officials via social media.

“We try to provide sort of uniform treatment here,” Weiberg said. “We treat coaches and athletes the same way. If they’re out there commenting on plays directed back at the officiating inside a game, we fine them, we suspend them, we reprimand them.”

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