Yesterday I was watching my Wildcats beat the Boston College Eagles (Go Cats!) during one of our preseason football games. There were several suspect calls by the officials (I don't think it's OK for that BC guy to take a swing at one of our players, ref) which sparked a conversation with some of my friends where I learned something new - referees are hired by individual NCAA conferences. I knew that the away team brings their refs with them for inter-conference games (seems weird to me, but I guess it's to offset the home field advantage). In pondering the seemingly biased flags being thrown (and yes, I realize that I don't tend to pay to much attention to the validity of the calls that go in my favor, so it might not be biased at all) I wondered why all of the NCAA refs weren't on some sort of rotating schedule to prevent any type of conference bias at all. That is when a friend of mine let me know that each conference employees their own referees.
This local affiliation is apparently one of the reasons that college football referees were not interested in being replacement refs for the NFL. If they gave up their college jobs they would likely be replaced. Should the referee strike in the NFL wrap up quickly these refs would then be out of a job - no college job and no NFL job (I guess the refs from the lingerie league did not have the same concerns).
So once we hit conference play I will be happy to know that the refs are Big 10 employees and therefore do not have any particular bias one way or the other. Unless, of course, they are Wildcat fans!
Go Cats!
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