It’s not your imagination. The officiating in college basketball is bad, and unlikely to improve. Accepting that is clarifying. The rules of the sport should change to lessen the impact of that officiating and improve the overall product. I have one humble suggestion: eliminate personal fouls.
I know, it’s inelegant — and often annoying — to complain about officiating. It’s probably not the reason your team lost. There probably isn’t some wink-and-a-nod conspiracy to punish your favorite head coach (except for my favorite head coach, who is being punished). Online gambling weaving its way into all aspects of the sports experience probably isn’t affecting the calls on the court. But the officiating is bad, and it makes watching the sport less enjoyable than it should be.
College basketball is better when the best players are on the court and on TV. Two quick first-half fouls can bench stars for an hour of real time. Late-game foul trouble often takes the best players off the court for the most exciting and consequential part of the game, the part most likely to be seen by casual viewers.
Think about what an insane choice that is.
It would be dumb even if the rules were consistently applied and enforced, and we all know they’re not. This plan I’m hatching doesn’t remove the possibility that bad calls (or endlessly reviewed calls) would ruin the end of a game, but at least it ensures the game action will be decided by the best players.
To make it work, team fouls would have to be more impactful. Maybe one-and-ones start at five team fouls, and two-shots at seven? An additional shot or retaining possession may need to be added at some point (15 team fouls?) to discourage hacking and manage pace of play. Flagrants would have to be a strong check against outright violence and to protect players.
There are details to be worked out. I’m an ideas guy, not a scientist.
As basketball’s stability and popularity were sacrificed for football TV revenue, the regular season became a niche product—an invisible prologue to the premium TV event, the NCAA Tournament.
For many complicated reasons (the adults didn’t want the players to get any of the money), coaches became the sport’s main characters. Now, NIL, social media influence, and imminent revenue-sharing are upending that paradigm.
Very soon, there will be more mouths to feed with the income that has long stayed in the pockets of coaches and administrators. Making the game better and more popular will make the regular season a more valuable TV product. If there’s one thing we know motivates NCAA decision-makers, it’s not taking a pay cut.
While this could be the turning point that finally gets powerbrokers to care about officiating — because players will become a growing force in brokering that power — it’s still unlikely that there will be an appetite to devote new resources to referee salaries and development.
After covering a referee-assisted UConn loss in 2014, I set out to write a piece excoriating refs for their inconsistency and lack of accountability. By the end, I had sympathy for the overworked and undercompensated moonlighters traveling the nation to chase world-class athletes up and down the court.
The middle-aged people (D1 MBB average 44.06 years old in a 2020 NCAA report) charged with policing the game are, for the most part, doing their best. It’s not their job to care about declining viewership of the men’s game or the overall customer experience.
This is a rare moment when the financial interests of schools, TV networks, and players overlap. Making the on-court product more consistent and more player-focused is good for everyone.
A good first step would be to stop letting referees take them off my television.
