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If the NCAA is fixed, then why

litespeedhuskerfan

Nebraska Legend
Aug 27, 2006
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did they let Wisconsin beat Kentucky? Were there not some questionable calls that helped Wisky pull away there? Wouldn't the NCCA have salivated at the thought of Duke-Kentucky for the title? Now that would have been a rating bonanza.

Officiating has been bad for a long time, and I didn't expect them to fix it by tip off last night.
 
55 pages views as of this typing and not one reply. Is it because deep down everyone knows the NCAA isn't really fixed, and the reality is that people just don't like Duke for whatever reason? Probably.
 
Who said it's fixed, one person?

We've already read a ref post on here there is definite bias and calls made or not made in fear of losing the opportunity of calling future games. I don't know about you but that's what I'd consider corrupt.
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I don't think it's fixed.

I'm a very casual fan of collegiate basketball, and this is my view of Wisconsin. And I wanted Wiscy to win. Wiscy is up by 9, Duke has 2 starters sitting due to fouls. I expected Wiscy to run away with it, that didn't happen, Duke tied it up. The game was over at that point to me, I was just waiting for the clock to run down and Duke to be named champions.

Basketball has evolved into a physical contact sport, and so there's individual interpretation in the rules. There's so many bad calls and no calls, I only watch NU and some of march madness.
 
Originally posted by HuskerTimOmaha:
Who said it's fixed, one person?
Your other thread has several people eluding to it. Several. I just went back and re-read it, I found more than one.
 
I don't feel that it is fixed, but have serious issues with the final couple mins of the UK/UW game, and then last night the way that K complained at half about not being able to get UW to foul, and voila, UW with 7+ fouls 7 mins into the second half.

For Tom Izzo to have to say that he hopes that the officials don't allow Krzzeksisktisk to affect the game, well, there you have a problem. Video doesn't lie, yet shot clock violation by UW against UK late in game, and Winslow's foot out of bounds, among other calls....officials have to be better.

Maybe most concerning is allowing the obvious travel...Kaminsky did it, his vaunted drop step, against UK with less than 2mins left that put him on the line for two(he made them), and then several times last night. Ruins the game for me because it does allow officials to affect the game....so many flops last night(Jones late in game), just ugly, imo.
 
I alwas wonder what these officials are told to call and what not to call. The amount of un-called travels that could easily be called by first year officials baffels me. I have officiated for years, and I know these NCAA officials are among the best in the country. There is no doubt in my mind that they are told to ignore certain calls and to aggressively call others.
 
We took it different then, but I'll admit I have a red screen on mobile after the midway point so it's very difficult to read from that point on.

You didn't address the rest of my post though, corruption can be considered fixed.
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I don't think college basketball is fixed, but it's being run by 15-20 power coaches who want to micromanage every single aspect of the game - officiating included. I still like college basketball, but it would be a more enjoyable sport if they would lock these egomaniacs in a janitor's closet before tipoff, and not let them out until the game is over.

The Kentucky loss was a great example. UK pissed away 2/3 to 3/4 of the shot clock on nearly every possession late in the game, before even looking at the basket. And then when they can't get a decent shot within those 8-10 seconds against a good defensive team, Calipari drags out the standard "We just didn't execute" line that coaches love so very much.

Didn't execute what, exactly? Your piss-poor game plan that took the air out of the ball and completely handcuffed your players? Is that what they failed to execute?
 
Does the NCAA have to be fixed? Realistically, the questionable calls probably have nothing to do with the NCAA and everything to do with the individual ref (or the group of referees in some instances.)

Who is to say that if I was a ref that I couldn't make an attempt to change the outcome of a game all on my own based on who I personally wanted to win?

I have never been a referee before and have no desire to ref. I am sure most referees do their level best and don't miss calls on purpose, whether they didn't see something or they "thought" they saw something when they really didn't.

Heck, maybe one of the referees has an agenda and pushes his fellow refs to ref a certain way. I am sure it can be like many other jobs where some coworkers are bullies and you get pushed around by them and do things their way.

For those of you who have been a ref, have you ever been intimidated by another ref that you have refereed with?
 
Originally posted by HuskerTimOmaha:
We took it different then, but I'll admit I have a red screen on mobile after the midway point so it's very difficult to read from that point on.

You didn't address the rest of my post though, corruption can be considered fixed.

Posted from Rivals Mobile
I think it's more incompetent than corrupt.

I have a hard time believing something that doesn't need to be corrupt to be wildly popular would purposely try to affect games. NCAA is getting wild TV ratings, and if it was corrupt, at least to the extent some people think, I would think you'd hear about it. Using the word corrupt is suggesting something criminal to me, and I don't think it could be swept under the rug. To many people would know and somebody would spill the beans. Corrupt is just a fancier way of saying fixed to me. Everyone's mileage may vary on that translation, but that's how I look at it.
 
Well, someone (collegiate ref, also have examples) has posted it here, and you still don't believe it. I'm not sure this is a discussion to have, your mind is made up regardless what someone involved has to say.

As far as viewership (TV ratings), attendance has declined 7 straight years and TV ratings also declined, 6% this past season. Tournament numbers were up this year but not sure that's saying much since the title game last year (2014) had a 32% drop from the previous year (2013).

You'd have to share where you're getting the data from because a quick Google search says the opposite, sans the 2015 tournament...
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I didn't see that thread. No idea what you're talking about on that.

I did hear a radio show talking about TV ratings this year (which I thought were awesome numbers but only half listened), beyond that I'd take your word for it.
 
Originally posted by RedMack:
I don't feel that it is fixed, but have serious issues with the final couple mins of the UK/UW game, and then last night the way that K complained at half about not being able to get UW to foul, and voila, UW with 7+ fouls 7 mins into the second half.

For Tom Izzo to have to say that he hopes that the officials don't allow Krzzeksisktisk to affect the game, well, there you have a problem. Video doesn't lie, yet shot clock violation by UW against UK late in game, and Winslow's foot out of bounds, among other calls....officials have to be better.

Maybe most concerning is allowing the obvious travel...Kaminsky did it, his vaunted drop step, against UK with less than 2mins left that put him on the line for two(he made them), and then several times last night. Ruins the game for me because it does allow officials to affect the game....so many flops last night(Jones late in game), just ugly, imo.
When I saw the halftime interview with Coach K, I knew Wisky was done. The look on his face when he talked abut them being in foul trouble meant only one thing. Duke would use their quickness to go to the hoop, and Coach K would bitch, scream, and yell, until he got his way. Conspiracy? Favoritism? Corruption? Don't know, but it was one thing for sure, PREDICTABLE.
 
One of the many discussions about refs. Poster "GBR ASP" shared some behind the scenes info on what happens if you go against certain coaches, and he's in the profession plus close with others involved.

Here's one article about the decline:

http://time.com/3744860/march-madness-selection-sunday-college-basketball/
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Originally posted by TwinsRRUs:

Heck, maybe one of the referees has an agenda and pushes his fellow refs to ref a certain way. I am sure it can be like many other jobs where some coworkers are bullies and you get pushed around by them and do things their way.

For those of you who have been a ref, have you ever been intimidated by another ref that you have refereed with?
This has never happened to me, nor have I ever heard of it happening to anyone.

We have discussed in length some of the challenges involved with being a college basketball official, so I'm not going to rehash them. Bottom line - the NBA model that puts employment, training/philosophy, leadership, and transparency (they've recently begun an initiative to improve this) into a streamlined hierarchy that ultimately rolls up to the commissioner is much more effective at producing more consistently called, uninfluenced plays and games. The NCAA does not have this model, and the quality of officiating is a result of the fragmented way things operate in the world of college sports. This isn't all the NCAA's fault. They don't control the conferences. The conferences call the shots, and within the conferences, the coaches call the shots, albeit indirectly, but quite persuasively.

I'm not sure I feel that it's corrupt or that I'm corrupt for choosing to pursue this career. But it does make for some very challenging waters to navigate when you're trying to keep assignors happy and out of hot water with league commissioners and influential coaches. I don't think I've ever actually made a call or ignored a call purposely bc I was concerned about losing my job. But I have been coached to evaluate contact and happenings on the court with the perspective of whether or not I need to make that call at such and such point in the game. Call the obvious, get the elephants, no matter where they occur on the court. If you think you see an ant, let the primary official make the call. If he passes on it, trust that he did so for a reason, unless you know he didn't see something that you saw. Then go get it. When you start calling out of your primary, correct call percentage decreases considerably.

Regarding the replay at the end of the game last night - I have no problem with the officials deciding they weren't able to see with 100% confidence the tip off the finger brush the ball before going out of bounds. Given the 20-24" monitor they have to see it on, and the lack of viewing angles that they're able to use, they very well may not have had the angle or the pixels to make the decision. It's the way it goes.

I can tell you that there will likely be changes to the replay rules coming to the college game. This isn't a result of things that happened in the tournament or anything like that.

Fans assume that officials, who are at player level on the court and see all the action at full speed, while watching their own primary and secondary areas as well as trying to reach into action areas when they don't have competitive match-ups, see plays as clearly as they look on TV. Sometimes, the fans at home have a better angle than any of the officials. That's the point of replay, but the current replay rule restricts its use, and all of the angles available to the TV viewer are not available to the alternate official sitting court-side.

Sometimes, there is only one official with the angle that shows a defender in legal guarding position at the time an offensive player left the floor before charging into the defender, and he also may be the official furthest from the play and, as the official with tertiary responsibility for that play or area of the court, he may not see the whole play. That's why angles and floor positioning are two of the most important fundamentals to perfect. You have to put yourself in position to see multiple, quickly occurring things happen at once. Sometimes officials are out of position. Sometimes they're in a great position and their vision gets straight-lined by the body of a player not involved in the play.

One other thing - I didn't take Coach K's comment to mean they officials were missing calls in the first half. Maybe he did mean it that way, but I didn't see it as such. He is well aware Wisconsin plays extremely good defense and rarely fouls. I think he meant what he said, they were driving and they weren't doing enough to cause Wisconsin to foul them. And that was the truth. Wisconsin wasn't fouling on Duke's drives to the hoop in the first half.

Anyway - this isn't meant to cover for or make excuses for anything that may have been missed last night. I have a lot of respect for the 3 that worked the game. They called it how they saw it. That's the best anyone can ask.
 
I guess I fall back on my original question...If it's corrupt or fixed, wouldn't Duke-Kentucky have made more sense? Did you get the feeling the "powers that be" wanted Kentucky to win that game? Wisky-Duke is a good matchup, but it ain't Kentucky-Duke.

You've changed my mind before, you certainly know your stuff, but I don't know about this one. I think the refs just suck.
 
http://www.statista.com/statistics/269186/ncaa-mens-basketball-tournament-average-tv-ratings/

If I am reading this chart correctly, looks like TV ratings on this chart anyway, are pretty good and consistent. Trending up and not down, and if 2015 numbers I thought I had heard on the radio are correct, they went up again this year. Bottom line for me, I don't think the fix is in or it's corrupt. I think the officiating just flat sucks. But I've been wrong before.
 
The NCAA isn't fixed, it's broken as hell.

One-and-dones, academic disintegrity, AAU/'handlers'/world wide wes, shoe sponsorships, crappy fundamentals, players allowed to hack like crazy, what's a travel, officiating growing more horrible each year, etc, etc. Geno had it right.
 
Originally posted by HuskerTimOmaha:
Actually no need to share another link, you linked the tournament which I already mentioned up above.

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Unless I misread it, doesn't that link show good TV numbers, trending up? For some reason when I click on it now it wants me to upgrade or something. Can't see the chart now the way I saw it originally, but they looked good and pretty consistent. Having said that, I am not saying CBB doesn't have issues, of course it does. I just don't think it's in the big trouble everyone else does,.We still tune into the tourney and it's popular enough that they don't have to fix anything, and to read some people's suggestions that the NCAA placed phone calls at halftime to get the desired outcome is laughable. I know you didn't say it, but I've read it aplenty.
 
Originally posted by litespeedhuskerfan:

Unless I misread it, doesn't that link show good TV numbers, trending up? For some reason when I click on it now it wants me to upgrade or something. Can't see the chart now the way I saw it originally, but they looked good and pretty consistent. Having said that, I am not saying CBB doesn't have issues, of course it does. I just don't think it's in the big trouble everyone else does,.We still tune into the tourney and it's popular enough that they don't have to fix anything, and to read some people's suggestions that the NCAA placed phone calls at halftime to get the desired outcome is laughable. I know you didn't say it, but I've read it aplenty.
You'll have to point me to where it states that outside of the NCAA tournament which I already granted in a previous post. Every article I've found matches what I already shared, attendance and TV viewership is down (outside of the tournament). As far as the tournament, of course there will always be major interest in it, it's huge with gambling.

2014 tournament, it was reported Nevada brought in $343,400,000 from the basketball. 70% of that amount is attributed to March Madness. I have the link on a text so I'll share it in the next post. And according to the article, the handle isn't too far behind the Super Bowl numbers. That's damn impressive....

Your link says, "The statistic shows the average TV rating of the games in the NCAA college basketball tournament (March Madness) from 1993 to 2013. In 2012, the games had an average TV rating of 6.1."



This post was edited on 4/7 9:51 PM by HuskerTimOmaha
 
Well for me anyway, college basketball is the tournament. Outside of that nobody cares that much. I think maybe that's where the disconnect is here. Nobody cares much about the regular season, yes they have viewership issues there. But I am not sure how that relates to the bad calls last night and the so called "fix is in" or corruption people are associating with last nites lousy officiating.
 
Originally posted by litespeedhuskerfan:

But I am not sure how that relates to the bad calls last night and the so called "fix is in" or corruption people are associating with last nites lousy officiating.
Well, you're the one that brought it up as a supportive stance in your post at 2:19pm.

Here's what GBR ASP has to say, and he's in the business...

We have discussed in length some of the challenges involved with being a college basketball official, so I'm not going to rehash them. Bottom line - the NBA model that puts employment, training/philosophy, leadership, and transparency (they've recently begun an initiative to improve this) into a streamlined hierarchy that ultimately rolls up to the commissioner is much more effective at producing more consistently called, uninfluenced plays and games. The NCAA does not have this model, and the quality of officiating is a result of the fragmented way things operate in the world of college sports. This isn't all the NCAA's fault. They don't control the conferences. The conferences call the shots, and within the conferences, the coaches call the shots, albeit indirectly, but quite persuasively.
His second full paragraph is just as telling. It's up to you to believe what he has to say, and that's first hand experience.
 
Maybe I am doing a lousy job of explaining it because I read the post at 2:19 you're talking about and am not sure what it says, that relates to what you just quoted from me. Far as I'm concerned, season starts March 1st. I don't think there is anything anyone can do in a championship game (Or the Elite 8) that will help regular season numbers for attendance or TV ratings. They will stink forever. Game has changed and there is zero anyone can do about it. Tournament is where they will have to make their living from now on. Fixing or corrupting a championship game will not make anyone tune into next years regular season games one iota more. People still love the tournament and would much rather watch Kentucky-Duke and if it was fixed they would have made that game happen. Bad calls in the Wisky-Kentucky game kept that from being a better possibility.

As far as the statement you highlighted in bold, I've read it a couple times and would say something similar to what I said above. Calipari has more juice Bo Ryan has. Yet Calipari is the one who had some bad calls go against him in the Final 4. Are some coaches are better at working the officials than others? Yup. But that's still a far cry from a corrupt organization or fixed games. Also, the other thing I glean from reading your highlighted text is the NCAA is managed really lousy, which we have known for a long time.

"I'm not sure I feel that it's corrupt or that I'm corrupt for choosing to pursue this career"

"I don't think I've ever actually made a call or ignored a call purposely bc I was concerned about losing my job".


Two lines from the post you are referencing. One telling you it isn't corrupt.
 
You should've said that from the beginning then. Unfortunately, the season doesn't start in March and TV ratings are evaluated from start to finish. And as I originally stated, correctly, attendance and ratings are down.

You left out something in paragraph two...

"But it does make for some very challenging waters to navigate when you're trying to keep assignors happy and out of hot water with league commissioners and influential coaches"
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If you've ever read anything I have ever typed about NCAA basketball, and I am not sure why you would because it isn't really my cup of tea and I know very little about it, I have felt that way since forever. Anything I ever have an opinion on is based on that premise. Regular season sucks and it's a bore. Haven't attended a college game since the mid 80's, and we both left parts of gbr's post. It was pretty windy, and we both cherry picked it to make our point.
 
I didn't cherry pick anything and was clear from the get go. TV ratings drop didn't support your stance and later on you stated your opinion is based off of the tournament, not the other 1,000 or so games broadcasted throughout a season. If you posted more often on the subject, then I could read your mind. Since you don't, we'll, here we are...
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Allow me to rephrase. Remove "cherry pick" and insert this instead.... You referenced a post by a ref a couple times trying to convince me the NCAA is a little corrupt. I pointed out that very poster is quoted saying he doesn't think the NCAA is corrupt. You went on to find other quotes from him to support your thoughts that it is corrupt, and ignored the very sentence where he told you it isn't. Semantics to me. Like I said prior, you have changed my mind before, but not in this case. I have heard nothing to change my mind and you never answered how it can be corrupt or fixed when the calls went Wisky's way instead of Kentucky, and you ignored the fact Duke had two stars in foul trouble all night in the title game. In arguably the two most important games of the year, calls on the floor suggest to me nothing was even remotely corrupt or fixed. I still say the ref's just suck and in regards to the NCAA itself, I still say they are more incompetent than corrupt.
 
That isn't what I did after his post. He was very clear in his previous posts on here WHICH HE NOW REFUSES TO ADDRESS, on how coaches control refs and in his very own comments ITT, he references it again but at a less than direct way.

If you don't think "coaches calling the shots" (his words not mine) is corrupt, that's on you and to a lesser extent him.

I'll be back later to quote him again since you're struggling.
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"The conferences call the shots, and within the conferences, the coaches call the shots, albeit indirectly, but quite persuasively."

"But it does make for some very challenging waters to navigate when you're trying to keep assignors happy and out of hot water with league commissioners and influential coaches."

If that isn't corruption, I don't know what is.
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I get the conference power struggle argument but were the referees who did the championship game from the ACC?
 
Any time the announcers look at a video a dozen times and are still not positive on the call, the call needs to stay as called, which is what happened. The refs are not watching it on a 70 inch tv when making the decision like we are at home.
 
The NCAA is currently not fixed.
The NBA is currently not fixed.
The NFL is currently not fixed.
MLB is currently not fixed.
The NHL is currently not fixed.

Hope this clears some things up.
 
Thank you to a former RSS member for bringing this to my attention....

ESPN article #1



When Joe DeRosa, Michael Stephens and Pat Driscoll went to the scorer's table for a video review, they spent nearly two minutes watching various angles of the play, and confirmed that the ball was last touched by Wisconsin.
"All four of our officials were involved in the review -- Jeff Clark was our standby," John Adams told SiriusXM College Sports Tuesday. "We never saw on our monitor what everybody saw at home, if you can believe that."Meanwhile, broadcast viewers saw an angle that appeared to show Duke forward Justice Winslow touching the ball with his fingertips just before it went out of bounds.
Adams said he saw the broadcast angle only after the referees left the scorer's table, and considered taking an unprecedented step -- calling the officials back over to the monitor -- before deciding against it.
"I saw it after they had left the monitor, and actually thought about: Is it in my prerogative to get up, run over the table, buzz the buzzer and tell them to come back and look?" Adams said. "That's how critical I thought the play was, and concluded that this is a job for the guys on the floor and I've never done this before, why would I do it tonight and perhaps change the balance of the game?"
"We had been told time and time again, 'Nobody at home will see anything you didn't see.' And I will tell you that's not what happened last night. That is not an excuse. That is just laying it out for you."[/QUOTE]
ESPN link #2, NCAA calls bullshit on the above underline.

NCAA VP: Officials did see all replay angles
So the standby official openly lies, linked in the first ESPN article, that they didn't have all the replays as we did from home but for some reason, we aren't to believe officiating isn't corrupt? Not only that, he admits he saw the ball go off the fingertip of Winslow but decided against calling back the floor officials to reverse the call.

laugh.r191677.gif
You can't make this up.
 
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