This story isn’t new, but an interesting read nonetheless.
Being that refs have been discussed heavily this past season, I figured it would be a cool story to share with the audience.
Good story, thanks for sharing. Interestingly, Higgins was part of the crew that screwed up the end of the TT/Gonzaga game and none of them advanced to the Final 4. Saw a rumor on another site that Higgins was retiring at the end of the year. If true that would be his last game.
This brings me back to the referee debate and the fact that there is such an obvious solution. Higgins can say in the article that the travel doesn’t affect him, but that is crap. These guys need a more reasonable schedule so they can be at the top of their game. Working with some of the travel they are doing is just insane! Not to mention when they are doing all these games, when do they have time to study film/reflect/get better? Lets start developing a wider pool of officials and get these guys doing less games!
There needs to be a wider pool of refs but at the same time coaches don’t want to venture off to the new guy/girl because they don’t trust them yet.
As a HS coach, one of the biggest issues is that the younger refs, that are good, get swallowed up to college quickly and the HS athletes have to deal with the guys/girls that simply aren’t good enough.
I wonder how many of the bad calls in 2013 (the block in particular) he was responsible for.
To me, the solution is to employ refs as salaried employees rather than paying them game by game. Surely there is enough money at least among the Power 5/6 in college basketball.
I think they should be full time employees as well. Makes way more sense for them to get paid by the conference or conferences than to do what they are doing now. Many of the top guys will work 5-6 days a week, travel all over the country, and do it for two or three months and make well over $150k.
It needs to be regulated a bit more with all the travel and the potential fatigue. There is a reason that NBA refs don’t do back to back games throughout the season.