https://www.cbssports.com/collegefo...do-away-with-conferences-having-own-officials
From the arcticle:
Call it "One Nation Under Stripes." Whatever. The concept of conference labels for officials has to be eliminated. The NCAA rules committee can still manage the rulebook, but the officials themselves should be overseen by a national body, instead of the individual conferences.
I had a prominent AD tell me last week that some prominent commissioners are warming to the idea. Get rid of the concept of each conference overseeing "their" officials.
Mike Leach once pounced on the fact a guy from Austin was working a Texas game Texas Tech was involved in. He was fined and reprimanded but he had a darn good point. The less affiliations, the better.
The Pac-12 already endured another embarrassing episode in its sordid officiating history. Not only did the crew get it wrong in the Wisconsin-Arizona State game, they waited two days to offer a vague explanation.
At least when the SEC screws up, it usually owns it promptly and identifies officials who have been reprimanded/penalized.
Too often, though, who got what wrong and why varies from league to league. Why shouldn't officials be identified for their mistakes, the same way players are when they commit a penalty? In an age where transparency is a precious commodity, we need more when it comes to the arbiters of the game, not less.
"I've always been a proponent in nonconference games that you need neutral officials," Benson said. "Next year, how important nonconference games are going to be, you want to remove all doubt about fairness."
There shouldn't be any such thing as an "SEC official" or "Conference USA official." Labels imply something that shouldn't be there.
Pay them all the same wage. Let some national body rate them. Not doing so implies that SEC officials have a much harder job -- that the game means more to its fans, players -- than anyone else.
(To be fair, the Big 12 and Mountain West have an agreement to share officials as do the Big Ten and MAC. "There are some baby steps in that direction," Redding said.)
College football's zebras should be the same as baseball umpires. The more anonymous, the better.
Instead, we have the likes of Gordon Riese basically run out of the game after the Oklahoma-Oregon fiasco. Hey, I know Oklahoma got screwed but does that make it right that a replay official's life was impacted?
We are bordering on a national officiating crisis if only because of the new targeting ejection rule. Targeting interpretation has become an acquired taste. Officials know it when they see it. That's not good enough.
