For years, this league has had to deal with a huge disparity in the quality of officiating between weekday and Saturday games. And, the reason is financial. The big leagues play more and as a result they get the best of the crop on Saturday while the Sun Belt gets leftovers.

It was especially bad when Wright Waters was Commissioner (not blaming him). We'd have an NCAA crew on Thursday and then guys you never heard of on Saturday. And, I going the phrase "Saturday Night in the Sun Belt" when introducing the crews. I got called into the principals office one time after writing a piece on a game where a crazy number of free throws was attempted (I think it was 96.)

Then the Sun Belt made an agreement with the ACC and the Supervisor of Officials insisted that the better officials commit to doing a certain amount of Sun Belt Saturday games. The result is you had one very established and experienced guy plus two who weren't as experienced. The result of that wasn't perfect, but there was less discrepancy.

Now we have an agreement with the SEC in all sports. We've seen football officiating get better, but basketball and baseball has taken a big step back. The Louisiana-Texas State game on Saturday was one of the worst officiated games I've seen in quite some time.

I don't know if y'all have paid attention. I realize it's very popular to rip officials, but do you see a difference between quality on Thursday vs. Saturday?

(01-19-2022 01:31 PM)BirdofParadise Wrote:  For years, this league has had to deal with a huge disparity in the quality of officiating between weekday and Saturday games. And, the reason is financial. The big leagues play more and as a result they get the best of the crop on Saturday while the Sun Belt gets leftovers.

It was especially bad when Wright Waters was Commissioner (not blaming him). We'd have an NCAA crew on Thursday and then guys you never heard of on Saturday. And, I going the phrase "Saturday Night in the Sun Belt" when introducing the crews. I got called into the principals office one time after writing a piece on a game where a crazy number of free throws was attempted (I think it was 96.)

Then the Sun Belt made an agreement with the ACC and the Supervisor of Officials insisted that the better officials commit to doing a certain amount of Sun Belt Saturday games. The result is you had one very established and experienced guy plus two who weren't as experienced. The result of that wasn't perfect, but there was less discrepancy.

Now we have an agreement with the SEC in all sports. We've seen football officiating get better, but basketball and baseball has taken a big step back. The Louisiana-Texas State game on Saturday was one of the worst officiated games I've seen in quite some time.

I don't know if y'all have paid attention. I realize it's very popular to rip officials, but do you see a difference between quality on Thursday vs. Saturday?

For years now.

Yeah, I've seen Saturday officials get wrapped up in the heat of the game and start calling fouls they thought they see like crazy after calling nothing in the first half.

Thursday officials are more consistent in their calls.

I don’t know why anyone would ever want to be a basketball official. Doesn’t matter how well you call a game, you’re still getting yelled at, and if I’m in the building, you’re getting yelled at by me.

Try CUSA football refs out for a season. Thankfully we are done with them for conference games.

(01-19-2022 05:22 PM)EigenEagle Wrote:  

(01-19-2022 01:31 PM)BirdofParadise Wrote:  For years, this league has had to deal with a huge disparity in the quality of officiating between weekday and Saturday games. And, the reason is financial. The big leagues play more and as a result they get the best of the crop on Saturday while the Sun Belt gets leftovers.

It was especially bad when Wright Waters was Commissioner (not blaming him). We'd have an NCAA crew on Thursday and then guys you never heard of on Saturday. And, I going the phrase "Saturday Night in the Sun Belt" when introducing the crews. I got called into the principals office one time after writing a piece on a game where a crazy number of free throws was attempted (I think it was 96.)

Then the Sun Belt made an agreement with the ACC and the Supervisor of Officials insisted that the better officials commit to doing a certain amount of Sun Belt Saturday games. The result is you had one very established and experienced guy plus two who weren't as experienced. The result of that wasn't perfect, but there was less discrepancy.

Now we have an agreement with the SEC in all sports. We've seen football officiating get better, but basketball and baseball has taken a big step back. The Louisiana-Texas State game on Saturday was one of the worst officiated games I've seen in quite some time.

I don't know if y'all have paid attention. I realize it's very popular to rip officials, but do you see a difference between quality on Thursday vs. Saturday?

For years now.

What exactly do we gain by this scheduling agreement with the SEC? What do they gain?

I always want to play our tougher games on Saturday during the year, inconsistent officiating can even those games out.