Discussion of sports can often fall into an irrational abyss. But even the most levelheaded people lose their ability for rational conversation\u00a0when it comes to officiating. In a rational world we’d hold the officials to the same standard as the players.<\/p>\n
Playing basketball at the highest level\u00a0requires among other things quick decision-making.\u00a0We recognize that not every player\u00a0can be Markelle Fultz or Malik Monk. Most of the players coming off the bench for a Big South team are working hard to be their best, too. For a variety of reasons beyond their control, they just aren’t as good as the players you see on ESPN promos.<\/p>\n
Likewise, officiating<\/em> basketball also requires quick judgments. Because of that, there will be a lot of mistakes made over the course of a game. And accordingly, there is a range of ability across the hundreds of people that officiate\u00a0college basketball. Being a top official\u00a0takes a lot of work and experience, and surely, talent. The great\u00a0officials are working big games in power conferences. The not-so-great ones are subbing in the occasional Big South game.<\/p>\n This piece is not an attempt to defend officials, but I thought I’d take a stab at a method to identify\u00a0the best college officials. You don’t often hear people saying things like “Official X is the best in the conference” or “Official X is better than Official Y” and I suspect that’s largely because there’s\u00a0no data available to make such judgments.<\/p>\n The problem with this idea is that\u00a0I have no way of actually grading officials. But officials do<\/em> get graded by someone and I’m operating\u00a0on the assumption that the best officials get assigned to the best games. That is surely not precisely\u00a0true on a daily basis, but over time, if an official is regularly working the biggest games on the national stage, the folks that make such decisions\u00a0probably\u00a0think he’s doing a solid job.<\/p>\n In order to assess the quality of a\u00a0game, I’m using the Thrill Score from FanMatch, imperfect though it may be. But it would seem to capture the things that are important here: opponent quality and game competitiveness. The only other thing we need to account for is the officials’ schedule. The busiest officials can top 100 games in a season. I’m going to value\u00a0quality over quantity, so I’d prefer not to reward officials for bulk scheduling. In that interest, I’m taking average Thrill Score over the top 50 games that an official works in a season.1<\/sup><\/a><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n Based on this approach, here were the top 20 officials last season.<\/p>\n One fault with this method is that there’s a regional bias. Geography really puts a ceiling on game quality. Rogers Ayers is based out of Roanoke, Virginia<\/a>, which is a good starting point to get some of the best games in the country. He gets a bunch of ACC assignments and occasionally snags an SEC, Big East or Big 12 game as well. He worked the game of the day yesterday between Villanova and Virginia. I don’t have any inside info on his schedule, but I think you can mark him down for one of the Duke\/North Carolina games this season.2<\/sup><\/a><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n Verne Harris is the best official\u00a0in the West but is limited to the Pac-12 for high-visibility games. He also works the Mountain West heavily and\u00a0the opportunity for big games in that league isn’t what it used to be. He even worked a Big Sky game Friday night. Some sort of regional ranking would\u00a0be the fairest thing to do.<\/p>\n The problem with that is\u00a0you have someone like John Higgins who transcends both regional attachment and the traditional bounds of hair-product use.\u00a0He is willing to criss-cross the country during the season and has\u00a0already worked three games at Cal and three games at Georgia this season. No matter where you are, it’s possible Higgins is nearby.<\/p>\n Here’s what the standings look like for this season.<\/p>\n In addition to Ayers seeking a repeat of last season’s title, five officials appear in both last year’s and this year’s top ten. That’s not bad especially considering that two of last season’s top ten, Mark Whitehead<\/a> and Bryan Kersey<\/a>, moved into coordinator roles this season.<\/p>\n It should go without saying that year-to-year movement in the rankings is sensitive to some randomness in game assignments, too. It is unlikely that at this point in his career, Ted Valentine went from the 17th-best official last season to the fifth-best this season. True officiating talent can’t change all that much between seasons and if you were going to do this right, you\u00a0would want a two-year rolling average and maybe\u00a0more.<\/p>\n It’s conjecture on my part, but I’d\u00a0guess that seniority alone plays a large role in assignments as well. Even when a younger\u00a0official’s skill might be surpassing some of their older colleagues, they’re unlikely to get the prime assignments that\u00a0their more experienced counterparts\u00a0have been getting for years. It’s also plausible that the occasional official that makes the jump from college to the NBA is probably not rated all that well by this approach, either. Those officials are often young and not getting marquee games.3<\/sup><\/a><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n Much like ranking college teams with an objective method, there is\u00a0always going to be some sort of measurement error associated with the assumptions of the model. Short of having access to every official’s evaluations this method should put officials in the proper neighborhood in terms of their presumed ability. It’s better than nothing, which is what we have now. Hopefully, I can publish this on a more frequent basis sometime soon.<\/p>\n <\/span> Official Rating\r\n 1 Roger Ayers 63.2\r\n 2 Mark Whitehead 61.4\r\n 3 Mike Eades 60.6\r\n 4 John Higgins 59.0\r\n 5 Mike Roberts 58.6\r\n 6 Doug Sirmons 57.7\r\n 7 Bryan Kersey 56.6\r\n 8 Keith Kimble 56.6\r\n 9 Jamie Luckie 56.3\r\n10 Pat Driscoll 56.1\r\n11 Tom Eades 56.0\r\n12 Joe DeRosa 56.0\r\n13 Terry Wymer 56.0\r\n14 Pat Adams 55.6\r\n15 Brian O'Connell 54.7\r\n16 Kipp Kissinger 54.2\r\n17 Ted Valentine 53.7\r\n18 Verne Harris 53.1\r\n19 Randy McCall 52.6\r\n20 Jeffrey Anderson 52.5<\/pre>\n
Official Rating\r\n 1 Roger Ayers 50.8\r\n 2 Mike Eades 50.4\r\n 3 John Higgins 48.1\r\n 4 Terry Wymer 46.7\r\n 5 Ted Valentine 45.7\r\n 6 Jeffrey Anderson 45.6\r\n 7 Jamie Luckie 44.5\r\n 8 Keith Kimble 44.3\r\n 9 Michael Stephens 43.1\r\n10 Brian Dorsey 43.0\r\n11 Bo Boroski 42.6\r\n12 Doug Sirmons 42.2\r\n13 Steve Olson 42.1\r\n14 Verne Harris 41.7\r\n15 Pat Adams 41.5\r\n16 DJ Carstensen 40.8\r\n17 Pat Driscoll 40.5\r\n18 John Gaffney 40.4\r\n19 Kipp Kissinger 40.4\r\n20 Ray Natili 40.3<\/pre>\n