I appreciate that college basketball officiating is difficult and kind of a no win situation. My question is, is there any way that we could have better officiating with a different kind of officiating?
I have watched a LOT of basketball in my years, I started rewinding calls I would make that officials would miss right around 1998. On those calls that I dispute I am right most of the time on travels, double dribbles and out of bounds. I can't definitively argue with block/charges and fouls on shots and blocks as I think they are a matter of opinion.
If you watch officials, they have a really tough job they have to run a lot, move according to the lead official and try to be in the right location to make a call, which, in certain situations is impossible. Not to mention that during the game the officials will rotate through the positions and hopefully they can be consistent with each other AND more importantly end to end, which in short spurts is difficult as two different people are calling the baselines and then the center and trail officials are calling certain things and areas based on where the lead is positioned. Consistency and what you can and can't do depends so much on the individual who is calling what and at what time.
With the advent of hi-def cameras and electronics being the way they are, why not have 4 or 5 people with the ability to switch their own consistent pre-positioned camera angles that specialize in certain areas of the floor, that call the same area of the floor for both teams for the entire game or maybe each person specializes in a certain area of officiating like out of bounds, block / charge, traveling / double dribble / palming, How about one person that watches dead ball stuff like killing the ball or coaches outside the box. you get the point. In this case, you may not like their calling, but hopefully it would be consistent (bad or good.) end to end and throughout the game. Consistency is key and with the way that officials have to call a game, it is difficult for three people to do.
Now, we likely still need on court officials to maintain control of the personal aspects of the game, coaches and players swearing, etc.
One advantage would be that the Bill Self could not play the refs, because they would be in a room somewhere with monitors, not sharing the floor with them.
You could actually even keep the officials totally anonymous, heck, why tell people who they are, they're not held accountable for anything anyway. However, they could be ridiculously tracked with analytics based on what they see, you could really get to the best of the best and they could practice all the time.
So, can it be done? What's your idea. Why should we stick with the status quo? You know you do a better job sitting at home than those guys on the floor do, right?
