COMMENTARY : Officials Shouldn’t Steal the Spotlight

With less than three minutes left in Duke’s 89-73 victory over DePaul in the opening round of the Maui Invitational last Monday, the Blue Devils’ Antonio Lang caught a pass from Bobby Hurley in the middle of a fast break, took off from the foul line and emphatically dunked the ball over Peter Patton. It was the most electrifying play of a one-sided game.

The pro scouts seated behind the basket sat up straight and began making notes about Lang’s explosive move while his teammates congratulated him. There was only one problem. Racing out from underneath the basket, referee Dave Libbey was waving off the basket, giving the signal for charging. Hank Nichols, who supervises officials for the NCAA, jumped out of his seat, hands on hips and stalked away from the court, unhappy with the call.

“I’ve been trying for years to get guys to no-call that play,” Nichols said later. “Just leave the guy lying there. If the defensive player is four feet in front of the basket, okay, you have to call it, but when he’s under the basket -- unless you call him for an undercut -- you just leave him there.”

Nichols smiled. “In fact, at that stage of the game (Duke was up 20), if a kid makes a move like that, I might no-call it no matter where the defensive player is.”

Duke Coach Mike Krzyzewski was more blunt than Nichols. “The guy just blew it,” he said. “The proper reaction to a play like that is to applaud.”

The reason the the call is significant is that it magnifies a continuing problem for college basketball: officials who forget that the fans come to watch the game, not the officials.

Pete Newell guided California to the national title in 1959 and the NCAA final in 1960 before retiring from coaching at age 44 to become a guru to, among others, Krzyzewski and Bob Knight. He is vehement about the behavior of officials in the ‘90s.

“It’s completely out of control,” said Newell, who was at the Maui tournament scouting for the Cleveland Cavaliers. “It all gets back to television. Every game is on television these days and the officials are convinced everyone wants to see them make calls. Ridiculous. I would say officiating today is about one-third as good as it was before TV. These guys have forgotten their job is to let the players play the game and stay out of the way. But now, with TV, they don’t want to stay out of the way. They want to be the stars.”

Although Nichols agreed that the call on Lang was a mistake, he defends his officials.

“I don’t think TV has affected the calls that guys make,” he said. “Are there arrogant people in the profession who get carried away? Certainly. But that’s true in every profession. All you can do is try to put the best guys out there -- and attitude is part of being one of the best guys -- and hope everything works out.

“I honestly believe that if our officials weren’t doing a hell of a job nowadays, we’d have complete chaos on the court with the way the game is played today.”

How can two of the most respected men in the sport disagree so sharply? Easy. They’re both right. There are officials who preen. Some of the top men, who work the most-important games, will sometimes explain their calls to the TV announcers but not the scorer’s table. Lots of referees over-officiate. With three-man crews, there are times when someone will make a call just because he hasn’t blown his whistle for a while. Far too often officials call fouls for incidental contact. Assignments are too political.

But there also is no question that most officials work hard and try to improve from year to year. More are in excellent shape than in the past and they take what they do seriously.

This year officials have had a new wrinkle thrown at them by the image-conscious NCAA Presidents Council. Acting under orders from the council, Nichols instructed officials during their preseason clinics to enforce the rule against profanity. Officials have only called technicals when a profanity is directed at someone: an official or an opposing player or coach. Now, officials have been told they are to call a technical whenever they hear a profanity.

During one of the games on Maui, DePaul’s Brandon Cole went up to try and catch an alley-oop pass during his team’s victory over Stanford. The ball rolled off his fingertips. As Cole hit the floor, he uttered a profanity in frustration. He was immediately nailed with a technical.

This is a very bad idea. No one is encouraging players to swear, but to punish them for an instinctive reaction in the heat of a game is wrong. What’s more, if an official overhears a coach using profanity in his huddle, he is supposed to call that too.

Think about this for a second: During last season’s Duke-Kentucky epic, Krzyzewski’s first words to his team as it came off the floor trailing 102-101 with two seconds left included an obscenity. If an official who thought he was the star of the game had been within earshot, Christian Laettner might not have had the chance to make his historic shot. Who -- other than the most-rabid Kentucky fans -- would have benefited from seeing the game end on a technical foul?

“It is an image thing,” Nichols said. “The presidents are concerned about the high-visiblity sports and they have asked us to enforce a rule.

The presidents should quit worrying about heat-of-the-moment obscenities and think about long-term problems -- you know, little things like cheating and graduation rates.