Are ACC Basketball Officials Overworked?

ACC College Basketball Rankings & Lists Stat of the Day32

I’m sure many of the readers of SFN have jobs that require them to travel. If you are one of those people (or even if you’re not), imagine this is your travel schedule after the Christmas break.

Starting on December 27th through January 29th your travel itinerary reads like this:
St Louis MO
Syracuse NY
Piscataway NJ
Fayetteville AR
Murfreesboro TN
Pittsburgh PA
Nashville TN
Atlanta GA
Tallahassee FL
Bowling Green KY
day off
Chapel Hill NC
Elon NC
Jonesboro AR
Providence RI
Raleigh NC
Richmond VA
Tampa FL
Knoxville TN
Clemson SC
day off
Baton Rouge LA
Athens GA
Blacksburg VA
day off
Chestnut Hill MA
Coral Gables FL
Cincinnati OH
day off
College Park MD
Chattanooga TN
day off
Raleigh NC
Chapel Hill NC

That’s a total of 29 assignments in 34 days with no more than 1 day off. If your job required you to do that, even if your actual time on the clock was 2 to 4 hours a day, wouldn’t your brain be mush at this point?

That was the schedule of ACC basketball referee Roger Ayers.

To be honest, I’m piggybacking off a CBS Sports article that looked at the work schedule of Karl Hess using information from statsheet.com. Karl Hess being the ACC and Big East official that was part of a crew that failed to call a blatantly obvious goaltend that would have sent the West Virginia vs Syracuse game to overtime. Hess has worked 22 games in 29 days in January (and 26 in 33 days if you go back to late December). Gene Steratore was another of the officials in the WVU/Cuse game and had worked 17 games in the last 29 days. Actually 19 games if you count the 2 NFL games Steratore refereed.

According to the referee statistics on statsheet.com, of the top 12 officials that have worked the most games in the 2011-12 season, 9 of them have called an ACC conference game this season (Brian Dorsey, Roger Ayers, Jamie Luckie, Mike Eades, Bryan Kersey, Michael Stephens, Ted Valentine, Karl Hess and Mike Kitts).

There are 9 officials that have called at least 5 ACC conference games between 2 ACC teams. How many total games have they reffed in the 29 days so far in January of 2012?

The refs are listed in order of the number of ACC conference games between 2 ACC teams they worked. The numbers listed are the total number of games worked that includes those ACC matchups plus other conference games and non-conference matchups.

Bryan Kersey – 23 games in 29 days
Les Jones – 20 games in 29 days
Roger Ayers – 24 games in 29 days
Karl Hess – 22 games in 29 days
Brian Dorsey – 25 games in 29 days
Jamie Luckie – 24 games in 29 days
Ray Natili – 20 games in 29 days
Mike Eades – 20 games in 29 days
Bernard Clinton – 12 games in 29 days

Bryan Kersey has called the most ACC conference games and has worked 23 total games in 29 days. How does that compare to the leaders in conference games (between 2 conference teams) worked from other major conferences?

SEC – Anthony Jordan has worked 15 total games in 29 days
Big 12 – John Higgins has worked 22 total games in 29 days and Joe DeRosa has worked 15 total games in 29 days
Big East – John Cahill has worked 20 total games in 29 days.
Big Ten – Mike Kitts has worked 21 total games in 29 days
Pac-12 – Michael Irving has worked 14 total games in 29 days

Nobody wants to deprive college refs of their livelihood as I’m sure they get paid more the more games they work. How about the conferences taking some of those bowl payouts or TV revenue money from ESPN or CBS and paying the refs a little bit more while putting some limits on how many games these refs can work. Refs being overworked probably isn’t the only factor in bad calls but I have to think it doesn’t help. Shouldn’t John Swofford and John Clougherty be sitting down in the ACC offices and addressing these sort of things?

I’ve never refereed a basketball game but it seems like with 10 players, 3-point lines, out of bounds, coaches to deal with, etc, that there’s an awful lot to keep an eye on. Maybe the schedules for refs have always been this full but it seems awfully hard for me to believe that a ref can be on top of his game when he’s worked so many games (or even multiple sports for some refs) all over the country with only a few days off. If you’ve slept in a different bed almost every night for a month, you’re jetlagged or you’ve been driving around a crappy rental car, you’ve been running up and down a basketball court and Coach K is dropping F-bombs on you, aren’t you going to call a foul just to shut him up?

About WV Wolf

Graduated from NCSU in 1996 with a degree in statistics. Born and inbred in West "By God" Virginia and now live in Raleigh where I spend my time watching the Wolfpack, the Mountaineers and the Carolina Hurricanes as well as making bar graphs for SFN. I'm @wvncsu on the Twitter machine.

ACC College Basketball Rankings & Lists Stat of the Day

32 Responses to Are ACC Basketball Officials Overworked?

  1. VaWolf82 01/30/2012 at 12:21 PM #

    I had no idea they worked that many games. If the refs don’t travel as a crew, then you can also throw in the difficulties of working with different people every day in situations that require a lot of team work.

    I’m shocked (not) that Hess was part of a crew that blew an end-of-game call.

  2. tobaccordshow 01/30/2012 at 12:42 PM #

    HAHAHA at the suggestion that Swofford would want to chat about this. He’s perfectly happy with the refereeing in the league.

  3. Hungwolf 01/30/2012 at 12:53 PM #

    Nice point but in my observations of officials working NCSU conference games I have yet to witness any official suffering from whistle fatigue meaning they don’t seem to lack the energyto blow the whistle on NCSU or an inability to see our players in fact they seem surprising alert to be able to catch any foul Richard Howell or C J Leslie makes no matter how small the infraction may be.

    I would say that your point may be well taken in my study of UNC games as whistle fatigue seems to be a problem in their games. Poor refs too tired to call fouls on UNC in those games. Also I noticed them don’t seem alert at all as they are too tired to see all the hand checking by UNC and extremely rough play with no calls. It is extremely sad to see these poor refs being worked so hard and UNC taking advantage of it. Great article!

  4. WuffDad 01/30/2012 at 12:58 PM #

    Went to the UVa game. First live conf game I’ve been to in several years.
    Something was going on with the officiating for sure.

    Lots of what looked like phantom fouls on the Pack and egregious no calls on the Hoos in the second half – especially down the stretch. Definitely affected the outcome with at least two baskets taken away. Robbed Richard Howell (who is our MVP in my opinion – game changes without him) of an even bigger night. I’m pretty objective about what I see and there was definitely something wrong there.

  5. Khan 01/30/2012 at 12:59 PM #

    I don’t think they’re over-worked so much as I think they’re under-skilled.

  6. ncsu1987 01/30/2012 at 1:17 PM #

    I’m not (usually) a referee whiner, but I watched the replay of the UVa game last night and I have to say, it was stunning to see the difference in how the game was called on the two ends of the floor. Some of you guys who know more than I about the very particulars of the rules, tell me if I’m wrong. Am I just seeing this through partisan eyes, or is there really something to this.

    Example: On Calvin’s second offensive wave-off, he definitely pushes the UVa defender from behind before getting the rebound, so I guess “technically” the call is correct…? But if you watch on the other end, there’s much worse pushing going on that simply isn’t called. Hell, for that matter, on other possessions with State on offense there’s worse that isn’t called.

    I’ve always said that refs influence the game by what they DON’T call far more than by what they do. In this case, though, it was both.

    And to make those calls at such critical junctures of the game.

    Seriously, somebody who knows more than me help me understand.

  7. Khan 01/30/2012 at 1:19 PM #

    Let me just add this: In all seriousness, that is an awful lot of road time. I travel what I would consider to be quite a bit. And that is exhausting. Officiating is a very dynamic and intense task, and you need to be sharp. So, in all honesty, I can see where it would potentially have an impact.

    I will also say, on a side note, it seems like after each loss, we gripe and moan about officiating. I do it too. But it has not cost us a single game this season. If we were more efficient at matriculating the basketball around the court and propgating it through the ring, there’d be a lot less global complaining about officiating.

    I don’t believe the refs are out to get NC State. However, I believe NC State is not yet good enough to the point where a few “bad calls”, which will occur almost every game, will be easily overlooked. On the other hand, Ayrse was a categorical turd in the GT game. And that was completely disconnected from his travel schedule.

  8. IMFletcherWolf 01/30/2012 at 2:17 PM #

    I didn’t know that Gene Steratore was a basketball official in addition to being an NFL Referee.

  9. ryebread 01/30/2012 at 2:40 PM #

    I think that there’s a angle here about stress and personal relationships.

    I have a very high stress job that has me working 10-12 hours a day, but luckily it is typically only 5 days a week. One of my “reliefs” is to come here with a 5 minute break and breath a bit, but that’s an aside. I used to have a job where I worked about 9 hours a day for 5 days a week, but then averaged at least one weekend day. The number of on days versus off days was something that I personally found more stressful. There was never any time to really escape.

    From personal experience, I can tell you that any sort of personal issue is amplified in the high stress environment — particularly when one works many days in a row and doesn’t get much of an escape. If I had a disagreement with a colleague (particularly someone in an adversarial relationship), then there wasn’t enough escape time for the pressure to ever really release.

    I think that might factor into officiating. I think there’s more “memory” involved by the refs than one might care to admit. They don’t operate in a vacuum with no memory of the previous games. While the game should be called that way, it’s just not realistic, particularly given the number of days “on” and so few days away to unwind.

    Honestly, the relationship between the officials and the coaches has gotten increasingly adversarial. I’m sure it is mentally taxing being in a constant battle with coaches and players over every little ticky tack foul.

    I am like any other fan and think that my team doesn’t get its share of the calls. I think some games — GT, UVA, Stanford and UNC — this happened in particular. Not coincidentally, these are games that we lost. I’ve got a problem about how those games are called, and I’m sure that other teams’ fans do in some of the games we’ve won. Officiating seems to be a thankless job.

    Having said all of that, we can’t control the officials. We can only control ourselves.

    I think if we want to do anything that will help us with officials, it is have our players stop complaining over fouls. I have a feeling that we’re viewed as “whiny” by officials. If you cry over every foul call, then you don’t really have any leverage when one really is bad. On a 50/50 call, you also won’t have the influence to get one coming your way. You also won’t get a make up call when the refs do blow it. With the case of the over worked official, we come into a game, start whining right off the bat and they say “here we go again.”

  10. Prowling Woofie 01/30/2012 at 3:20 PM #

    Ayers-refereed games – Fouls called on Howell

    UNC-A – 1
    Indiana – 3
    Syracuse – 2
    Ga Tech – 4
    Miami – 5
    UVa – 5

    I would say the travel stress definitely accrues, and makes Roger a cranky-puss of late. And I’m sure grumbling about calls/no-calls by our guys doesn’t rub him the right way…

  11. ruffles31 01/30/2012 at 3:41 PM #

    Uh, can I get Ayers’ frequent flyer points?

  12. Khan 01/30/2012 at 4:23 PM #

    ^Wouldn’t do you any good. There are so many levels and categories of reward programs, only pilots get the upgrades anymore. :O

  13. Khan 01/30/2012 at 4:26 PM #

    ^^ I would also add that Howell is not a good defender, from a technique standpoint. He reaches and grabs, way too much, usually to compensate for being out of position, which is caused by a quickness deficit or an execution malfunction. He deserves most of the fouls he gets.

  14. Packfan28 01/30/2012 at 4:51 PM #

    Doing that many games, you’d think they would get good at it.

    There was one call Saturday night when CJL got an offensive rebound, the guy called a foul on him, and instead of two points for us it went the other way and they shot free throws. The replay showed it was a clean rebound – there was zero contact before, during, and after the play. I don’t know what the ref saw, but I think he just called it because he thought there must have been a foul committed. That 4 point swing would have made a slight difference in the outcome, ie, a W instead of an L.

  15. golf76 01/30/2012 at 5:30 PM #

    I’ve often thought that those players, in any sport, who complain about the stripes set themselves up for more calls. I suspect it’s hard to convince talented players to accept a call, right or wrong, when people have been telling them since grade school that they can do no wrong. This is a challenge for coaches. Getting control of it requires discipline. There’s got to be a way to break the “reaction” habit in several Wolfpack players, Leslie among them, so that their reactions to calls don’t affect the game, or their careers. Discipline. Discipline. Discipline.

    That said, if we were as good as some folks on this board think we should be at this point, we would be beating every team we play by 20+ points and calls wouldn’t matter.

  16. wolf pack 01/30/2012 at 7:05 PM #

    Sure these guys travel a lot but these games aren’t that long.
    I think some them are just bad refs no excuses. I wish i knew how they were evaluated.

  17. hoop 01/30/2012 at 7:23 PM #

    Khan wrote:
    “If we were more efficient at matriculating the basketball around the court and propagating it through the ring, there’d be a lot less global complaining about officiating.”

    “I don’t believe the refs are out to get NC State.”

    Herb? Is that you?

  18. BassPacker 01/30/2012 at 7:28 PM #

    Overworked? I’d say over payed. No symphaty for the devil from me. What I’d like to know what they (Ayers) do in their down time between games and flights.. would be more telling than showing how many 40 minutes a day they worked. Betcha knowing their down time habits would be more telling on their on court performances more than anything.

  19. hoop 01/30/2012 at 8:03 PM #

    Where did my comment go?

  20. Wolf74 01/30/2012 at 8:10 PM #

    Tired. I doubt it because it wouldn’t explain why they call so many bad fouls on NCSU players and ignore similar fouls other players commit. They have enough energy to make up phantom fouls. No, I believe it is a biase based on where their bread is buttered.

  21. WV Wolf 01/30/2012 at 8:53 PM #

    As I mentioned in the article, I don’t believe this is the only reason for the crappy officiating. I’m sure there are multiple factors. But the schedule for these refs can’t be helping.

  22. mak4dpak 01/30/2012 at 8:53 PM #

    Though we could, and should have one the game, regardless of the ref calls, it is still BS calls they award us too many times. Aren’t films watched following games to see where refs screwed up, and if so are they not reprimanded, if not they should be by the league.

  23. mak4dpak 01/30/2012 at 8:53 PM #

    Though we could, and should have one the game, regardless of the ref calls, it is still BS calls they award us too many times. Aren’t films watched following games to see where refs screwed up, and if so are they not reprimanded, if not they should be by the league.

  24. turfpack 01/30/2012 at 9:03 PM #

    Yes…refs being tried could be factor in games but…..more likely it’s their mental capabilities and lack of opitical focus.

  25. StandUpAndHowl 01/31/2012 at 12:55 AM #

    They have to tired. Some of the places that Ayers has ref’ed are not exactly easy to get to. Another factor to consider is that this type of scheduling leaves no time for the refs to review game film and see what they may have missed in a game and where they might improve.

1 2

Leave a Reply