Copyright Nbc Sports
At both the college and pro level, officials enjoy insulation from the same kind of scrutiny that players and coaches routinely experience. The officials are protected, to the point at which, in an age of legalized, normalized, and heavily monetized gambling, the extreme secrecy sparks suspicion. Clemson coach Dabo Swinney threw caution — and surely some of his cash — to the wind on Tuesday by daring to complain about NCAA officiating. “It’s impactful,” Swinney said, via Nick Kosko of On3.com. “So, you know, as opposed to just getting a report on Monday, you turn in 10 [plays] and we had a game … I ain’t gonna tell you the game. I’m not gonna say the game, but we’re only allowed to turn in, you know, there’s a system of accountability, but y’all don’t know anything about it. It’s behind a curtain. How dare we have accountability?” Swinney also dared to link bad officiating to the sports world’s new four-letter word. “In the meantime, we got gambling issues going on, people being suspended, all that kind of stuff, right?” Swinney said. “Yep. I mean, refs are people too. It ain’t just coaches and players. And if they’re a part of the game, then by God, they ought to be a part of the game, and they ought to be a part of the accountability, and they ought to be a part of the consequences, not just behind some shadowy curtain like no, they ought to have to answer for it.” Amen to that. We’ve said for years that the crew chief for each NFL contest should do a post-game press conference, not a mother-may-I pool report whenever someone covering the game remembers to ask for it, and the NFL decides to grant it. To prevent people from thinking the fix is in (and more and more people absolutely do), officiating needs two things: Consistency and transparency. College football and pro football currently have not nearly enough of either. The powers-that-be keep their heads low and mouths shut whenever there’s a storm to be weathered, confident that another bright, shiny object will distract our collective goldfish brains. The reasons are obvious. Plenty of officials will decide it’s not worth it, if/when they experience true accountability. Then, the folks minding the vault will have to offer them more cash in order to make it worth their while. That’s the root of all of the officiating problems, at both levels of big-time football. The stewards of the sport are too cheap to pay officials what it would take to get them to endure the kind of public attention that coaches and players routinely experience. For the NFL, the frugality is tied to the obsession with keeping the officials part-time employees. Everyone else connected to the sport is a full-time employee. The officials absolutely should be. And they absolutely should have to answer for and explain their mistakes. And they should be compensated accordingly to do it.
