This is a blog entry from Mark Cuban, touching (correctly) on a number of points that people have made about why officiating hiring/performance isn't transparent in college fb, from the perspective of a business (NCAA and conferences) managing employees. Interesting read. http://www.blogmaverick.com/2006/09/26/suspending-officials-a-business-lesson/ Like him or hate him, Cuban does a few things that I think should also be done by someone in the SEC with the clout, resources, and money (or a collaboration among different schools and/or private organizations). He has independent officials review game footage and document a crew's performance statistically. Cuban compiles this data, posts it on his blog, and presents it to the NBA every year (and gets fined ridiculous sums of money for doing it.) Similarly, someone with guts enough to stand up to the SEC should record every SEC game, have independent, former officials review footage (college or NFL level), thoroughly document statistics, and present findings to the SEC, NCAA and the public. Once and for all, the frequency of bad calls and the crews responsible for them can be quantified, rather than hearing a lame excuse after the fact. Performance can be monitored from year to year and compared with data from a control conference (Big-12 or Big-10, for example). Of course, the biggest problem is money. Cuban's a billionaire, he can afford the necessary resources and inevitable fines that follow. But I think it's high time that the public know the quality of officials the SEC is hiring, rather than hiding behind self-serving hiring practices and press releases.
