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Message: [QUOTE="willtalk, post: 3934743, member: 1220"] As I see it the major problem with officiating is that the 'Best of the best " are culled from a very poor pool to begin with. It's not just excellent peripheral that is necessary, but also visual processing speed. The standards for officials in this respect are very low. Officials were originally just fans pulled out of the stands and while the criteria has been elivated from that its not good enough. The level and speed of the games have our run the officials abilities to keep up. To be a good official , especially in basketball, requires a high degree of skill level in specific areas. There seems to be no minimum standard being enforced. At present anyone that wants to be an official just needs to apply whether they have the skills to do so or not. It would not take much to give vision and processing speed tests to eliminate those that do not possess those skills. Officiating could be a college course with minimum enterance standards and grades. It should be treated as any other profession is. Of course the "good ole boy " and now " good ol girl " system would not like that at all. They want to keep the standards low so that they don't lose their jobs. What might help is if the wages made the job more competative. The officials are as important, perhaps even more important than any individual athlete playing the sport. [/QUOTE]