Bilas Explained Why Hall Of Fame Coaches Like Coach K Get All The Calls

[Tugg Speedman]

ESPN's Outside The Lines did a piece today title "Anger Management."  It is about the behavior of college basketball coaches on the sidelines.  No Buzz shots but good shots of Bo and Crean losing their mind (and Boeheim losing it over the Duke game again and again).

http://espn.go.com/espn/feature/index?page=OTL

After the segment (not in the video above) they had a discussion about it with Seth Greenberg, Jay Bilas and former official Mike Wood.

During the discussion Jay Bilas explained why coaches like "legendary" Coach K or Boeheim get all the calls.  In the NBA the officials are paid by the NBA.  As Bilas explains, the NBA "owns" the officials.  They report to a head of officiating for the NBA.  NBA coaches have no say on who gets hired and fired.

In the college ranks, however, the officials are hired by the conference, and governed by the conference.  And who has say in hiring and governing those officials? The coaches.  And according to Bilas, the "legendary coaches" in your conference have considerable influence in this process.

So, if you like being an ACC official, then you better not piss off Boeheim or Coach K or your contract will not be renewed and you'll be in getting paid by the Sunbelt conference the following year (which probably pays less money than the ACC).

To be clear, Bilas did not name any coaches specifically ... I did that.  But Bilas clearly said that "certain coaches" that are "well respected" have influence over the hiring and firing decision of officials and Bilas thinks that affects the decisions they make on the court.

I've never heard it explained this way.  Thoughts?

[Eye]

If it's anything like the HS conference in which I'm involved with administration, it's dead on. Officiating is a topic at each seasonal coaches meeting. An AD running the meeting brings up officials, and each coach is free to bring up anything they'd like about officiating. Naturally the more veteran coaches have more to say. Those discussions are then summarized and passed on to the other ADs/commissioner/head of officiating at the same time at a succeeding meeting. Very little if any positive feedback is given from other ADs/commissioner/head of officiating if they're presented in a negative light by the AD that ran the coaches meeting. So basically if a veteran coach sees you in a negative light, you're going to be seen in a negative light by the guy scheduling officials.