It is an absurd anomaly of Canadian hoops that at the same time university athletic directors are demanding more of coaches – in terms of wins, recruiting, preparation, fundraising or whatever measure of accountability they choose – an aspect of their fates is entirely out of their control and in the hands of part-timers, or what are otherwise known as those nefarious creatures called referees.
Virtually every coach in the country asserts that the game is called differently from region to region, with different levels of contact allowed in different conferences or even different cities, and that there’s tremendous inconsistency in the way the game is called, from referee to referee, or even from one end of the floor to the other. And certainly there are times when observers are left wondering whether the three officials are calling the same game.
Yet, therein lies another absurd anomaly of Canadian basketball. Unlike the United States, where officiating has become a profession in itself and refereeing has quite often become a comfortable, if not lucrative career, almost all of the roughly 4,000 whistleblowers in Canada are what should properly be called volunteers. Their combined earnings probably don’t even match the wardrobe budgets of the Rick Pitinos and John Caliparis of the world.
Spend any time with most officials and you’ll quickly discover that they are typically highly-principled, well-intentioned and generally purchased a Fox-40 for love of the game. That is not to say that all are immune from delivering a bit of home-cooking, that all are competent, or that none are incapable of losing their minds. Even some of the country’s finest officials have taken over a game because someone said something, at just the wrong moment in time, so they lost control and started making out-of-position or phantom calls. And certainly anyone who has attended a game at lower levels, such as high school, community college or club games, can attest that there are times when the only legitimate response to the level of officiating is to walk out of the gym and shudder.
Yet, this being Canadian basketball, where everything is done on less than a shoestring budget, it would be difficult for anyone to argue that even the most incompetent official is doing it for the money, though some might argue there are a few who don the uniform because they relish the authority, or are addicted to theatrics. Even at the highest level of Canadian officiating, i.e., universities, the pay is on the order of $110-$120 per game (it’s far less in high school), which, when you start factoring things in like travel time and dead time waiting for games to happen, leaves you wondering whether there are occasions in which a ref is even making minimum wage. Contrast that with the United States, where NCAA officials earn between $1,000 and $3,000 per game (depending on the conference) and call 60-70 games per season.
But it does beg another question: Given the explosive growth of the game in Canada and the ever-improving level of play, is the quality of officiating, let alone the oversight, education and development of officials, keeping pace?
The short answer is probably not.
The FIBA answer? Definitely not.
The sport’s international governing body has long viewed Canada as an outlier, partly because the Canadian Association of Basketball Officials (CABO) didn’t fall under the umbrella of the sport’s national governing authority, Canada Basketball, and hasn’t for 41 years.
Canada has been under considerable pressure to end that divide and to revise its overall officiating regime so that it is more in line with one that FIBA is proposing to introduce in 2017, under which member states are expected to standardize the processes by which high-level referees are selected and developed, and to improve the mechanics and understanding of the rules among all its officials, explains Canada Basketball President & CEO Michelle O’Keefe.
That’s the primary impetus for the recent agreement that Canada Basketball signed with Canadian Interuniversity Sport, CABO and the Canadian Collegiate Athletic Association, under which a six-member Canadian Basketball Officials Commission (CBOC) has been created to elevate the level of officiating in the nation, O’Keefe says.
The most immediate impact of the agreement will be the introduction of a new process to select officials for the CIS men’s and women’s championship. The old system was a convoluted process involving a few golden handshakes, a dollop of lobbying and the odd political trade-off, such as a rotational concept that periodically gave PEI, for example, a “turn” to have a ref at nationals. The new system will have each province nominate a specified number of officials, i.e., Ontario 12, most other provinces four apiece, and PEI, New Brunswick and Newfoundland & Labrador, two apiece. All 42 names will put into a single pool, from which a CBOC subcommittee will select the 24 best refs who’ll call the games at the championships in Vancouver and Fredericton. In practical terms, it means that it’s theoretically possible, albeit unlikely, for all 12 officials calling the games at the men’s nationals in Vancouver to come from Ontario or the West.
Another facet of the agreement is a direct outcome of revisions FIBA is now proposing to improve officiating worldwide, including changes in the licensing system under which it now ‘cards’ international referees.
In the past, FIBA has selected the crème-de-la-crème through a Byzantine process involving international tryout camps, nominations from member federations to a specific international competition and other altogether convoluted and mysterious machinations. It was a complex regime but one which rewarded Canada particularly well. Some 22 Canadians (along with a recent Egyptian immigrant to Canada) now hold FIBA cards and we have a reputation for producing high-quality officials.
Although many of the elements of the new FIBA licensing system (which will also apply to evaluators, commissioners, instructors and coaches) haven’t been ironed out, the aim is to essentially create an elite cadre of blue-chip officials who will call games at international competitions. The precise criteria for making the cut will probably include such factors as age, competency, fitness, status within a home federation and experience at things like national championships, says long-time carded official Nadine Crowley, a member of the new CBOC and a FIBA commissioner/evaluator, a recently-created position in which someone serves as a sort of chief honcho for international games, overseeing and aiding both table and floor officials in ensuring that everything is being run according to Hoyle.
Under the new regime, the expectation is that each member nation will be allocated a specific number of FIBA cards and that Canada’s allocation will be significantly fewer than 22, though O’Keefe says the exact number hasn’t yet been specified. FIBA members will be expected to nominate candidates for cards, as well as provide evidence (video tapes, written test results, certification, etc.) of their competency, which, in turn, will be used by the international body to select the cadre of the elite.
Nations will also be expected to establish a “clear pathway” by which they will develop and nominate future candidates for international certification, clearly outlining the criteria and steps (such as required experience, training and nutrition plans, etc.) that someone will have to take to make the cut, says CABO President Morgan Munroe, one of three CABO reps to the CBOC.
Crowley says FIBA is also asking nations to create a “feeder system” under which they’ll develop international-grade officials. Though no one has suggested it, the logical inference is that CBOC will eventually contemplate the creation of something like a Canada Basketball license to identify all whistleblowers deemed competent to call national competitions. Or simply put, our own elite cadre.
Things get a whole lot trickier when it comes to the final, but perhaps most important, component of the agreement, namely the education and development of officials, particularly at the grassroots level.
The current situation is patchwork at best, even at the most elite levels of Canadian officiating, with varying levels of excellence and accountability.
Canada West appears to be the most advanced and professional, with convenor/assignor Bill Crowley having 15 years ago established a single referee’s panel for both men’s and women’s games. It’s now comprised of 118 officials and operates under rules such as one that requires that every conference game have at least one official from outside the city in which the game is held. The costs of travel and accommodation for such roving officials are primarily absorbed by having referees contribute 10% of their earnings into an expenses pot, and more recently, through elevated university contributions, Crowley says.
Ontario University Athletics, by contrast, didn’t move to a unified men’s and women’s panel (when the latter existed, it was typically referred to as the men’s training panel) until four years ago. Supervisor of Officials Tom Christie says there’s now enough of a budget to cover expenses for some officials from say, Toronto, to call a game in Ottawa, though “geography” still remains an assignment consideration. Talk to some of the panel’s 96 officials, though, and most will say that while there’s been an increase in cross-region assignments, it’s still more a rarity than the norm. Quebec has a single panel, but similarly, not necessarily a whole lot of cross-region assignments, while in Atlantic Canada, separate panels operate for each of the provinces, so games in PEI, for example, will never be called by officials from Nova Scotia, New Brunswick or Newfoundland & Labrador.
As you might expect, things become even more of a schmozzle when it comes to officiating games at lower levels, such as high schools, where local associations (often as many as a few dozen or more, per province) rule the roost. That’s compounded by the fact that there are even schools, such as those in Ontario, and boys’ play in British Columbia, where they’re still using American rules and it won’t be until next season that they start adopting at least a few “modified” (read: those that are cheap to implement) FIBA rules. With evaluating, assigning and education left entirely in local hands, there are some areas of the country in which games, as one veteran coach notes, “barely resemble basketball. There’s places where refs don’t call a travel unless they see a suitcase.”
The situation is even more piecemeal with respect to the continuing education and training of officials. Certainly, some admirable efforts are being made, such as the webinars that the Alberta association launched this year, or the summer clinics that officials like Roger Caulfield or Bruce Covert conduct in Atlantic Canada and Ontario, respectively. At the very elite level, Karen Lasuik, who earns her living calling games at the NCAA level, conducts an annual camp in Edmonton, for which officials must cough up $400 a pop, plus costs for travel, accommodation, meals and incidentals (read: beer). Though some associations make small contributions to an individual’s cause, it’s utterly remarkable that 80 or so officials annually give up their vacation time, and something on the order of $2,000, to attend Lasuik’s camp. But apparently, that’s just one of the things you must do to move up the officiating ladder.
At lower levels of the game, though, there is no expectation or requirement that officials comply with any manner of continuing education, even something as simple as going on-line for a class. At best, some associations have some manner of comprehensive education program, but at worst, some simply handout a piece of paper indicating the rule changes and “points of emphasis” for the forthcoming campaign.
Does Canada Basketball have the resources to help subsidize Lasuik-style elite camps across the country? Or help underwrite the cost of attendance? How about the bucks to hire someone to create and maintain a website to disseminate training materials, videos on the nuances between a block and a charge, or the best processes and criteria for evaluating officials?
O’Keefe laughs. She notes the initiative to improve Canadian officiating is embryonic, but that “we’re used to doing things with duct tape and paper clips, so we’ll figure it out … It’s too important. We just can’t keep going in 18 different directions. It doesn’t make sense.”
Duct tape and paper clips?
It brings to mind a ballyhooed event in Ottawa late last year, during which officials breathtakingly announced an “NBA Cares” contribution to the refurbishment of an outdoor basketball court in Almonte, birthplace of the game’s inventor, James Naismith.
One of two outlays by the league’s global social responsibility program in 2015, officials were reluctant to disclose the size of the contribution but Mississippi Mills mayor Shaun McLaughlin revealed that NBA Cares and Bell Canada combined to cough up “just over $19,000,” of the $28,000 needed to pave the court and put up new standards, backboards and nets.
Just over $19,000?
Now that’s modest.
So here’s a thought.
Given that Maple Leafs Sports & Entertainment pockets millions annually from the sale of Toronto Raptors paraphernalia and tickets in Canada, and has a vested interest in the long-term development of the game here in the North, what if some of us stopped schlepping to Toronto to attend games and buy those fabulous “We the North” T-shirts unless and until Canada’s team opens its coffers for grassroots initiatives aimed at the greater objective of elevating and developing the game in the country, including a fund to improve officiating?
Doubtless, MLSE already contributes something to Basketball Canada (though no one will reveal that number) but given that the organization’s annual $6 million budget is paltry in comparison to that of its international counterparts and that the league thinks that $19,000 is a generous donation to the game, it’s probably a real stretch to imagine that half or even a quarter of the national federation’s resources are the product of Raptor beneficence.
And if a notional contribution like $5 million or so per year toward the development of the game is too daunting for MLSE to contemplate and handle, how about a small percentage of annual revenues?
Now there’s another thought.
How about the same 10% that referees now cough up from their meagre wages?