B1G Hates Us Theory - Motive?

[HerbRedman]

I can make my post a pretty lengthy post because I have a lot of inside knowledge and experience with this. I'll try to keep it short.

What are we doing to attract younger people into wanting to go into refereeing?

That's the biggest issue IMO. No one wants this job anymore. No one wants to be shit on in social media for making a mistake. Attacked by idiot helicopter parents. Etc

 

[BorWhiskey]

Seeing the assignment was “what’s the motive”, here’s my attempt, but I could only come up with 2.

1. Our fans pack stadiums and spend money regardless, and we do it better than most programs do when those programs are winning games. If their wallets aren’t impacted, why not give us some extra losses and keep us down so that those other programs feel better about themselves.

2. Ohio State and Michigan are the darlings of the conference. The history of the conference. And they want to make sure their history stays at the top. If we start to win again l, our history will start to shine and take some of that limelight.

 

[Ironwardog]

Are big ten officials direct employees of the big ten conference or are they subcontracted out from a private company for the season? I asked a few friends of mine and they think direct employees because of bowl games and non-conference games they say “Big ten officials” but that could also be part of the language in the contract?

 

[HerbRedman]

The best explanation I've heard is that Delaney and the other B1G higher ups felt like Nebraska pulled a fast one with the Academic research stuff. I always forget what its called..AAU or some such. Anyway we needed that to join the Big Ten and then promptly lost it about the same time the ink was drying on the contracts for the move. That's also why the big push for us to get it back. There is legit concern the B1G would ask us to leave as it is a part of their qualifications to join/be in this conference. This is something that I read when Blo was still the coach but it did make sense at the time...sort of. It has nothing to do with betting or Vegas.

I deleted my earlier post about timeline. You are correct, I was wrong.

B1G did accept UNL while it was still an AAU member. Then in the time between public announcement and actual start date we were removed from the AAU.

B1G/Delaney made the decision to stick with Nebraska at that point. It sounded like Delaney was stuck with us even if he wanted to back out. So your theory could hold some water.

That was a wild time.

 

[huskerj12]

What are we doing to attract younger people into wanting to go into refereeing?

According to @alt f4 the ref world is working to bring more black and/or female refs into the profession, I'm sure there is plenty of work going into bringing younger people into it too. Not exactly sure what exact tactics they're using. But if there really is a huge generational gap creating a void of experienced refs, there are a ton of jobs to be filled. So if that's the case and most refs are thrust into jobs that used to be given to people with more experience, it would make sense that maybe this is a low ebb and once these newer hires get more and more experience we'll see better reffing.

But also the Big 10 hates us I can just feel it.

 

[Ironwardog]

I can make my post a pretty lengthy post because I have a lot of inside knowledge and experience with this. I'll try to keep it short.

Colorado game had Big 12 officials, not BIG officials.

I will say, there isn't an overall conspiracy or hate against Nebraska by the BIG. Conference wide and even across college football, both small college and major D1, and into high school and youth football ranks the reason for poor officiating is experience. I know and have worked with several BIG officials. There are extremely good officials and what I'd call pretty poor officials in college right now.

The biggest issue is experience, we're seeing younger and less experienced officials in college. My generation (40-50 y/o) doesn't have a large number of officials on any level and that starts in high school all the way up to college. This age range you'd see 15+ years of officiating experience, with probably 10+ of college, if they pursued it. There was an official, who did Nebraska spring game, who had 1-2 years of college experience. This guy struggled and I mentioned to my dad I would have him spotting the ball on my high school crew. He's hired in the BIG this year. Overall, newly hired major D1 officials have very little college experience.

I'll skip mostly over DEI hiring, but this goes with the experience category. There was a major push to get female and black officials across D1, which caused fast tracking of officials through lower college and lower D1 conferences to get them into the major conferences. Some with less than 5 years total offiicating experience from high school to college.

It took me around 2-3 years of Class A to feel comfortable with NAIA. It took me several years of NAIA and a couple years of Nebraska practices and scrimmages to feel comfortable with Nebraska's 1's scrimmages. That was without the pressures of crowds, crowd noise, TV, media, grading, and games on the line. I think it was around years 8-9 of officiating that I finally was comfortable with the speed and complexity of a Nebraska scrimmage.

The crews Nebraska has been assigned to the in the past several years were lower ranking BIG crews. Crews are assigned by games with a regional thought in mind. Major games with ranked teams will get the #1 or #2, maybe #3 crew regardless of region. Games like Nebraska vs Purdoodoo will get a crew from the region that is in the lower half of the conference.

A final thing is what conferences are focusing on for the year. BIG and NCAA is focusing on Offensive Pass Interference this year. With that officials are seeking this out more and with inexperienced, lower ranked officials, they'll incorrectly call this because they haven't seen it before.

From field level the game looks entirely different than TV angles. Without talking to the official who threw Fidone's OPI, I know what he saw, the "belt" is his key (LOS to 10 yards downfield), he came to this action late, and saw a displaced defender and Fidone turned sideways, his assumption that it was a foul. Inexperience, pressure of not missing an OPI contributed to this. He probably errors more on the side of not wanting a missed call and will take an incorrect call when graded, especially since the focus is OPI.

There will be bias against certain coaches and official's thresholds will be lower vs those teams. I'll admit there are coaches that walking into the game we knew were going to be a headache and bitch nonstop. I've thrown flags against their team I likely wouldn't have thrown in a different game. Same is true with coaches that are the best to work with and enjoyable. They'll get those 50/50 calls.

This backs up what a buddy of mine said is that the number of good experienced refs are leaving the job and we are left with more lower quality younger refs. The older ones are tired of hearing about it everywhere when they do make the inevitable bad call that hurts one team or the other thanks the the advent of social media blowing it up more than it used to be even 20 years ago. That and the other thing he pointed out is that we have piled on so many new rules lately that these younger less experienced refs are looking for SO MUCH more than used to one each every play.

 

[Baron Winnebago]

It's possible that we've just been a sloppy as fuck team for 13 years and the only conspiracy has been our idiot coaches and staffs who can't fix these issues

 

[djw004]

Seeing the assignment was “what’s the motive”, here’s my attempt, but I could only come up with 2.

1. Our fans pack stadiums and spend money regardless, and we do it better than most programs do when those programs are winning games. If their wallets aren’t impacted, why not give us some extra losses and keep us down so that those other programs feel better about themselves.

2. Ohio State and Michigan are the darlings of the conference. The history of the conference. And they want to make sure their history stays at the top. If we start to win again l, our history will start to shine and take some of that limelight.

I eluded to #2 with him as well - that it used to be you had to pick one front runner and pump them in order to crack into SEC bias.

Now with an expanded playoff, they should be able to pump 3-6 schools simultaneously. The only pushback on #2 is that we simultaneously have sucked balls at football - so doesn't apply as much as it would've if we were still legitimately good and still getting fucked over

 

[Baron Winnebago]

This backs up what a buddy of mine said is that the number of good experienced refs are leaving the job and we are left with more lower quality younger refs. The older ones are tired of hearing about it everywhere when they do make the inevitable bad call that hurts one team or the other thanks the the advent of social media blowing it up more than it used to be even 20 years ago. That and the other thing he pointed out is that we have piled on so many new rules lately that these younger less experienced refs are looking for SO MUCH more than used to one each every play.

Fans: "why do these refs suck?"

Also fans: "here's @alt f4's address and where his kids go to school"

 

[djw004]

It's possible that we've just been a sloppy as fuck team for 13 years and the only conspiracy has been amount our idiot coaches and staffs who can't fix these issues

 

[whoboppin]

Idk if Nebraska gets specifically targeted as much as other teams (mainly OSU and Michigan) get special treatment.

See 2020 when they bent over backwards so OSU could go to the Big Ten title. I thought that was the right decision, but I am almost positive they wouldn't have done that for us.

Nebraska having so many conference road openers is another one. Michigan not having to do Friday games, etc.

 

[Baron Winnebago]

Idk if Nebraska gets specifically targeted as much as other teams (mainly OSU and Michigan) get special treatment.

See 2020 when they bent over backwards so OSU could go to the Big Ten title. I thought that was the right decision, but I am almost positive they wouldn't have done that for us.

Nebraska having so many conference road openers is another one. Michigan not having to do Friday games, etc.

Sucking has pushed us out of the primo slots but having rabid mouth breather fans (myself included) who will turn on every game forces us into shit like Thursday/Friday night games to pop ratings for TV bucks

 

[...TrueColors...]

I get much more upset with basketball than I do football.

I refereed soccer for around 10 years and the golden rules were 1) Keep everyone safe 2) If you don’t see it you can’t call it.

In my opinion, I feel as if there are a lot of calls made by assumption and anticipation than actually seeing infractions. This is quite evident in basketball.

Nothing makes me more upset than a when a referee standing 3 feet away on the baseline doesn’t call a foul but the guy back at half court somehow sees through 8 players 50 feet away blows his whistle and calls a foul he physically can’t see.

 

[Baron Winnebago]

I get much more upset with basketball than I do football.

I refereed soccer for around 10 years and the golden rules were 1) Keep everyone safe 2) If you don’t see it you can’t call it.

In my opinion, I feel as if there are a lot of calls made by assumption and anticipation than actually seeing infractions. This is quite evident in basketball.

Nothing makes me more upset than a when a referee standing 3 feet away on the baseline doesn’t call a foul but the guy back at half court somehow sees through 8 players 50 feet away blows his whistle and calls a foul he physically can’t see.

I get homicidal when you see a dude close his eyes and drive into the paint with no intention of shooting just to get contact and the refs call it 94.37823% of the time

 

[jaihawk]

From field level the game looks entirely different than TV angles. Without talking to the official who threw Fidone's OPI, I know what he saw, the "belt" is his key (LOS to 10 yards downfield), he came to this action late, and saw a displaced defender and Fidone turned sideways, his assumption that it was a foul. Inexperience, pressure of not missing an OPI contributed to this. He probably errors more on the side of not wanting a missed call and will take an incorrect call when graded, especially since the focus is OPI.

Thank you for weighing in here... This has always been a big pet peeve of mine, especially with Basketball Officiating when I played. Don't call a foul/penalty because you "thought" that there was one. Call it if you actually see one. Far too often calls are made with the anticipation that a foul/penalty occurred rather than proof that one actually occurred. I feel like that's what happened here. There ref didn't actually "see" the penalty occurred, but assumed that one must have.

 

[HerbRedman]

I get much more upset with basketball than I do football.

I refereed soccer for around 10 years and the golden rules were 1) Keep everyone safe 2) If you don’t see it you can’t call it.

In my opinion, I feel as if there are a lot of calls made by assumption and anticipation than actually seeing infractions. This is quite evident in basketball.

Nothing makes me more upset than a when a referee standing 3 feet away on the baseline doesn’t call a foul but the guy back at half court somehow sees through 8 players 50 feet away blows his whistle and calls a foul he physically can’t see.

Aren't they doing this in football though too? The Fidone phantom OPI was a perfect example.

Also the Minnesota onside kick (not offside).

B1G FB refs start with the default: "we need to make our contribution EVERY single play." That's not what your starting point should be. Your starting point should be: "I want to be invisible & let these guy play, fairly." But B1G football refs expect to be the center of attention.

You could see it with the demeanor of the head ref in NU-Purdue game: he expected to be a key part of the game and a key part of the telecast. These refs should NOT want that. They should want to be on TV as little as possible.

But in the B1G, that guy....and the younger white guy that NU gets a lot are the two biggest offenders. They expect to be a big part of the show.

 

[Herbie]

Big 10 has terrible refs.
Bo Pelini pissed off a lot of refs that probably held a grudge against Nebraska for that.
Dudes can only take so much verbal assault from an angry man before they crack

 

[Sous Chef]

I deleted my earlier post about timeline. You are correct, I was wrong.

B1G did accept UNL while it was still an AAU member. Then in the time between public announcement and actual start date we were removed from the AAU.

B1G/Delaney made the decision to stick with Nebraska at that point. It sounded like Delaney was stuck with us even if he wanted to back out. So your theory could hold some water.

That was a wild time.

To be clear it was never my theory it was just something I read that stuck with me and seemed like a plausible reason for the B1G to have it in for us.

 

[2010sarenevercomingback]

Big 10 has terrible refs.
Bo Pelini pissed off a lot of refs that probably held a grudge against Nebraska for that.
Dudes can only take so much verbal assault from an angry man before they crack

Reminds me of one of my favorite news stories about verbal abuse.

There was a psychologist/academic who decided she was going to do an experiment about nagging, and being a psychopath like basically everyone in that field, her chosen method was to relentlessly nag her apartment building's unwitting handyman about every little thing for an extended period of time, and document his reactions & demeanor. After some time he snapped, & beat her to death with a hammer. Her experiment was discovered after authorities went through her things in the investigation.

No word on whether the results of the study were published posthumously.

 

[Ext. 55]

Here's the problem...everyone bitches about the refs and now no one wants to be a ref.

I've got a friend here in WA that is 64 yrs old. Still refs WA HS FB games. He says it's gotten so bad, their entire pool of refs is like 50% of what it needs to be. And average age is like 60. No one wants to be a referee anymore, mainly bc we've vilified the role for the last 20 yrs. He says there are zero younger guys coming along who want to learn it. It's all the same recycled 60 yr old crews. They have to ref HS games with one less guy due to the shortage. It's a real problem.

They get attacked at youth sports games & it goes viral etc.

We're continuing to bitch about refs but it's actually adding to the problem because now no one wants to be one.

Same can be said for most sports these days. Crazy to see out of control parents screaming at 12 year old refs who are reffing at a 9 year old game. Nuts.