From the Seattle Times:
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/huskies/2014380815_officials03.html
[…]there will be 16 new officials in the conference next year, hired away from the Big 12, Mountain West and WAC to replace those who were dismissed (along with the 11 who weren't invited back, another retired).
[…] Adding 16 officials will give the new Pac-12 a total of 49, or seven seven-man crews, Pereira said. An additional crew was needed with the conference expanding from 10 to 12 teams for 2011, adding Utah and Colorado.
The Big 12 has fantastic officiating–probably the best in the nation–so let's hope the majority of these guys come from that conference. The Mountain West crews are decent, though I'll never forget the phantom PI down in Salt Lake City. WAC officials, generally speaking, are horrible.
The Pac-10 said they will not name names, but I sent an email asking anyway. It can't hurt. Maybe Kirk has one too many and accidentally hits "reply + send". We'll see what happens with that. Rumor is Jay Stricherz was let go, but the source is a triple-chinned-oaf-who-posts-in-his-underwear-from-his-mother's-basement-on-a-third-tier football-forum. Plus Jay has that whole Keith Richards thing going on where he just never seems to go away.
Angry, I don’t like the part about those being let go “might be back as assistants” in the replay booth. Good luck on losing Stricherz, his full first name must be “Jason”. He can do as much damage upstairs as downstairs!
No way they let Stricherz go… the guy is an icon of bad officiating.
Hopefully they decide to fire the officiating crews that wreak havoc on GIll too.
McCabe is moving to either save his future or his legacy. For the last couple years, he’s enlisted Ed Rush as a consultant for the recruitment and development of refs. And I think this last year the Pac 10 invited all the WCC and WAC refs to the party in order to shore up the West Coast consistency in officiating.
I think this year has been better than last year, but I still have problems with the inconsistent calls on perimeter hand-checks, arm-play in the post and the overall laziness on charge v. block calls. The charges really get to me because the fans are starting to feel entitled whenever one of their players flops. Ask any Zonie what they think of the non-call (the correct call) when Joe Burton banged Kevin Parrom to the floor at the end of that game.
It’s not a hard call. And I’m sickened every time I hear one of the FSN announcers say, “That’s such a tough call.” Either the defender was set before the offensive player took his last step, or he wasn’t. But the laziness comes from refs just calling a charge unless the defender is standing on a coffee can under the hoop. I would say that half the charges called are in fact blocks, and I would also say that about 10% of the incorrectly called charges are dangerous plays that warrant a warning to the player and his bench. Under-cutting a guy going to the hoop in the hopes that refs will gift you a bad call is a major safety issue. And the dangerous plays come as a result of refs making gifts of most of these plays.
The NBA implemented their no-charge arc because of this phenomenon. Laziness and entitlement rule the day in NBA play, so inconsistent calls based on star power were going to kill someone eventually.
I don’t know what to think in a league where Kevin Brill is considered one of the better refs (in one of the better officiated conferences in the country).
I hope Jay Stricherz is the one that was fired. He’s the worst referee in the conference. It’s not a coincidence that the horrible officiating games in which the Beavers are playing in, have him officiating about 80% of them. I’ve been waiting for him to be fired for years, hopefully it finally happened.
As long as they took the good Big 12 officials. I saw some horrific displays of officiating malice this year…see Nebraska vs. Texas A&M. But, they have some good ones, as the Nebraska vs. Oklahoma Big 12 Championship game was very well officiated. I’d presume the guy did his homework and picked ones that weren’t involved in the highly questionalble games.
A la, Nebraska v. Texas 2009 Big 12 Championship game.
http://rivals.yahoo.com/ncaa/football/news?slug=cr-oregon030311
The important change is not WHO was fired, but THAT 11 refs were fired.
It’s called accountability, and it’s been completely lacking for a long, long time. Guys like Stricherz could hide behind the PAC10 leadership, and know that each and every awful call would be defended- or at the very least, swept under the rug. Now that’s no longer the case.
The PAC 12 sent a very strong message that this BS won’t be tolerated any more, and each and every ref will have a very strong incentive to officiate accurately and fairly. I have a hard time believing that the root of the problem is stupidity or incompetence (in most cases)- bias and laziness seem a lot more likely to me. And these problems can be overcome given proper motivation.
Good point.