I didn’t see this thread before I replied to a post in another thread so let me summarize that reply.
NCAA: Admit blatant referee errors especially in critical situations.
Identify the referees involved and put numbers on their uniforms for fan identification.
Publicly suspend them from all post season games.
This seems to work pretty well for the NFL. The NCAA must take responsibility.
I know this is only a "partway" answer but -
- The NCAA did acknowledge, for example, that the championship game last year was not refereed to standard, and the refs that worked last years final game were definitely banned from the final four and possibly the entire tournament this year.
- That said, apparently they do analyze all this and stated that referees' calls are just over 90% accurate on average. I personally can understand the challenge, but 10% of calls are wrong???? Really. I'm not sure what this includes, no calls?, out of bounds as well as fouls?, but it is still to me not so great.
- Also, just to be clear, the wrath fell on last year's refs for having an accuracy in the high 80%s. It wasn't really that much worse than normal.
- Among refs that have been suspended is Brian Enterline. He completely screwed up a tournament game years ago - it had to do with timing, IIRC, at the end of the game. In any case, he was suspended and has never been seen in the NCAA's since (although I can't say he didn't choose not to ref the tourney after his initial suspension).
- Putting numbers on NCAA refs wouldn't really work, there are just so many of them, you can have 500 working on a busy day, if not more. Their names are always in box scores, I'm a long time ref watcher and generally recognize most of them, especially if I have seen them.