As Division II reviews its playing and practice seasons and number of contests for the “Life in the Balance” initiative, leaders are starting with an “everything is on the table” premise and then finding where the unintended consequences may be.

One idea that may be withdrawn from the table is to reduce the number of officials in various sports as a way to save costs. A few presidents have floated that concept – including at a 2009 Convention educational session on economic impact at which the suggestion garnered applause from participants – but athletics practitioners who have more closely examined the notion find that it may be fraught with unintended consequences.

Conference commissioners in particular – a constituency that interacts with officiating perhaps more than any other – worry that shrinking crews, especially in basketball and football, may not be worth the savings.

“It would take a lot of convincing to go backward on the number of officials,” said Pennsylvania State Athletic Conference Commissioner Steve Murray. “The officiating issue isn’t so much Life in the Balance as it is just dealing with costs. That’s not a good answer for us.”

While Murray and others recognize the presidents’ intent of examining all aspects of cost containment, they point out that seven-person crews in football and three-person crews in basketball (an increase of one in each sport) were adopted several years ago as a way to improve the quality of the game and to address game-environment concerns. Retreating to six officials in football and two in basketball come with inherent risks, commissioners say.

“We went to three in basketball because we thought the quality of the game had gotten to the point where we thought we needed three to do a better job. Basketball in particular is the sport every commissioner hears the most complaining about regarding officiating, because it is easily the sport most difficult to officiate,” said Murray. “If you return to a two-person system, then everyone has to keep their mouths shut on the sidelines and in the stands because you can’t have it both ways.”

J.R. Smith, Murray’s colleague at the Rocky Mountain Athletic Conference, agreed that it would require a culture shift in basketball. “It would get tossed back to the athletics administrators who would have to make sure that coaches are comfortable with it, because there would be minimal tolerance toward complaining about the two-person crew. We went to three initially in response to all the coaches’ concern about officiating.”

Mid-America Intercollegiate Athletics Association Commissioner Jim Johnson said it’s more than game environment, though. Cutbacks in officials might even threaten the very pool from which Division II draws its crews.

“We have several officials who do Division II and some Division I and NAIA contests, and they would have to learn several new mechanics if we returned to six-person or two-person crews,” he said. “We’d have to invest some of the money we’d save in our own training program.”

Murray, Smith and Johnson noted that hardly any level of football or basketball uses the smaller crews these days. Many officials aren’t even familiar with the mechanics in the old systems.

“People who don’t interact with officiating closely have no idea of the training and mechanics and the responsibility these guys have. If we decided in Division II that we were going to go back to six or two, it would require a totally different training,” Johnson said.

Division II Championships Committee Chair Dave Riggins put an interesting twist on the matter, saying that the idea of reducing officials can’t be qualified in terms of the efficiencies that might be gained. While much of the Bylaw 17 review can be qualified with data, weighing the costs both gained and lost with smaller crews is too subjective.

“You can examine missed class time, or bringing kids in later for fall sports and ascertain the impact it has on student-athlete well-being or on budgets,” Riggins said. “There’s sort of a data-based comfort level in talking about Bylaw 17 that may not be present when you talk about officiating. If you cut down the number of officials, you obviously don’t spend as much money, but the quality of the game – you can’t gather that data.”

Riggins, who coached basketball for many years before becoming the AD at Mars Hill, isn’t sure whether the three-person officiating crews have helped improve the quality of the game. He said people tend to assume that the more officials, the better. But no one seems to be able to qualify that, he said.

“There’s no data that show that more officials lead to a better-called game,” he said. “Now I will say that from an administrative position, I have not had a coach come in since we increased the number of officials and say how much better the games have been officiated – coaches are still unhappy with the officiating!”

Containment in other sports

While commissioners and others don’t seem ready to embrace cutbacks in football and basketball, they are taking action unilaterally in other areas of officiating.

The RMAC’s Smith and the PSAC’s Murray said their leagues are assigning officials more geographically now than before when they were trying to achieve a more diverse rotation. Before, Murray said, the conference tried to avoid having the same official do more than two or three games at a particular institution, but now the league is keeping officials closer to home. 

Several leagues also have frozen officials’ fees.

Smith said the RMAC has gone from three umpires to two in baseball, and Murray said the PSAC is considering a reduction from four to three in the league’s postseason tournament to save tournament expenses (the PSAC already is at two umpires for regular-season contests).

But with such reductions come a reciprocal increase in expectations from coaches and others who take for granted an official’s effect on a game, particularly if the division moves forward in considering cutbacks in basketball and football.

“We have tried to react to concerns from coaches over officiating, but we don’t have that flexibility anymore in this economic environment,” Smith said. “If we do go down this path, it will be interesting to see if we can return to a time when we respected what the officials’ job is and accept that they will make mistakes and we’ll have to get on with our own jobs. Considering these cutbacks would command that shift. Coaches would have to shrug off mistakes and find ways to coach their kids to do the same thing. And we’re not built that way as a society right now. From a practical standpoint, cutting officials saves money, but how do you resolve the unintended consequences, like asking coaches to get out of the mode that ‘officials are costing me ballgames’?”

Murray simply urged caution in whatever changes are contemplated in the officiating arena. “I like to err on the side of officiating in these kinds of matters,” he said.

It appears he has company with that approach.