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Mental Preparedness and College Football Officiating: The Nebraska at Texas A&M Game 2010

By Andis Kaulins

Law and financial people are everywhere, including the world of sports referees.

This posting is about college football referees, but let us get a bit of related background information about the world of officialdom and how it works.

How about the world's best football referee of all time? Pierluigi Collina, otherwise a financial advisor by profession, was awarded the title of "world's best referee" numerous times in his career in association football (soccer), as reported by Jason Horowitz at the New York Times in A Soccer Superstar Prepares to Hang Up His Whistle. He was/is more famous than most of the best-known soccer players.

In 2005 Collina had reached the mandatory FIFA (World Federation of Soccer) retirement age of 45, which they extended for one year just for his benefit, but he retired anyway rather than get involved in a big conflict of interest issue for that extra year in which Collina was to receive £545,000 sponsor money from Opel, who also sponsor a major Italian soccer team, AC Milan. Collina is quoted as saying about the incident: "People must believe in a referee. In the end, we have all lost out."

Faith in the honesty of the system is an important thing and is certainly one of the key elements in the current commotion about the American football officiating in the Nebraska Cornhuskers (Huskers) at Texas A&M (Aggies) game 2010.

Richard Croome at AggieSports.com writes about the Nebraska at Texas A&M game 2010 as follows -- these are excerpts from a longer posting....:

"[1st quarter]  Key stat: Nebraska had more penalty yards than A&M had offensive yards -- 50 to 17....

[2nd quarter] Key stat: A&M linebacker Michael Hodges had more tackles at halftime (eight) than A&M had first downs (five)....

[3rd quarter]  Key stat: A&M's drive to take the lead for the first time was helped along by two pass interference penalties against Nebraska, the second on a third-and-8....

[4th quarter] "Wrong way again: For the second time in the game, head referee Greg Burks reported a personal foul correctly but pointed in the wrong direction. This time the call went against Nebraska's Eric Martin but the arm pointed against A&M. Burks got the next call right, hitting Pelini for unsportsmanlike conduct when the Nebraska coach argued the call."

That excerpted summary shows that the essentials of the game were also clearly understood by the Husker opponents, not just by Nebraska fans. Penalties and officials dominated the key statistics of the game and not the PLAY of the players. And there was bizarre behavior by officials as well. That is not the way college football is supposed to be.

Nebraska is undefeated in 2010, except for the games refereed by the same set of officials, who were in charge of Husker games against Texas and Texas A&M. A third game with those same referees resulted in an overtime win over Iowa State, which could easily have been a loss.

Otherwise, the Huskers this season are doing fine. Is that merely chance and attributable only to poor play by Nebraska in those games?

These are the names of officials according to a posting at the Grand Island Independent Forums.

"NU versus ISU -
Officials: Referee: Greg Burks; Umpire: Scott Campbell; Linesman: George Gusman; Line judge: Kevin Mar; Back judge: Shawn Hochuli; Field judge: Nick Lave; Side judge: Gene Semko

NU versus Texas -
Officials: Referee: Greg Burks; Umpire: Scott Campbell; Linesman: George Gusman; Line judge: Kevin Mar; Back judge: Shawn Hochuli; Field judge: Nick Lave; Side judge: Gene Semko

NU versus A&M -
Officials: Referee: Greg Burks; Umpire: Scott Campbell; Linesman: George Gusman; Line judge: Kevin Mar; Back judge: Shawn Hochuli; Field judge: Nick Lave; Side judge: Gene Semko"

We confirmed those officials by looking at the box scores of those games via The Sports Network Football Bowl Subdivision at ncaafootball.com (here, here and here). Definitely the same crew.

Who are these officials??

In Europe, it is normal that the names and biographies of the referees at the very popular soccer (associated football) games are well known to everyone, including the fans, for this has the advantage that it makes biased game calling very difficult and forces game officials to umpire games as fairly as they can -- there are still exceptions, of course, but by and large everyone knows who the referees are and what they are doing.

Some of the best referees in Europe are in fact equally as famous as the best players. There is a bit of that fame at the NFL pro level in America (e.g. Ed Hochuli), but not in college football.

Moreover, all association football referees in Europe must undergo a severe regimen of training and testing. Continuous education is also a must, even for the best of officials. The referee's performance is also under constant scrutiny and evaluation by the FIFA, the International Federation of Association Football, which is the international world governing body for soccer.

FIFA writes online:

"Football is a global sport and its rules must be interpreted and applied with absolute consistency wherever the game is played. FIFA therefore has a policy of ongoing training for its referees to ensure that refereeing standards continue to improve and the Laws of the Game are applied the same way everywhere."

In USA college football, on the other hand, it appears as if football referees lead an almost anonymous existence, applying what do not always appear to be uniform standards. The same hit that was OK one game before under a different officiating crew can be a game changing roughing the passer call. Indeed, if there is animosity between certain football teams and certain teams of referees, official penalty flags may be more ready to fly than otherwise.

When I coached soccer here in Europe, we established a policy that players on our team were forbidden to complain to referees. Referees have their job, the players have theirs. Some referees are better than others, that is normal and expected. The players also show various levels of talent and competence. You have to learn to live with it. See my posting on Selected Secrets of Good Coaching.

Many US college football officials work at other jobs professionally elsewhere and referee more or less as paid amateurs in their spare time (that is also the case in Europe, as refereeing generally is not well enough paid to serve as a full-time job).

In the USA, points in case are the officials who refereed the Nebraska games against Texas, Iowa State and Texas A&M.

Two of the game officials from those games this season are mentioned in a November 25, 2008 Bloomberg article by Curtis Eichelberger titled Football Ref Says Managing Money Prepares Him for Fans Catcalls.

At the time of that article, both of the mentioned officials (referee Greg Burks and back judge Shawn Hochuli), were [and we presume still are] financial advisors, just like the European Pierluigi Collina, who was a fantastic association football (soccer) referee, quite apart from his financial career.

In fact, as writen in Eichelberger's article, Shawn Hochuli invested (and may still invest) money for college and professional football officials.

Hochuli comes from a family with credentials as referees. Hochuli's father Ed Hochuli was a legendary and greatly respected NFL football official who played college football at the University of Texas in El Paso (UTEP), went to the University of Arizona Law School, was an attorney and founder of IWM Partners in Corona, California, "a comprehensive financial planning and investment services" company". Hochuli was involved in one of the most controversial of all referee decisions in the NFL (Wikipedia), but in spite of that error, Hochuli remained immensely popular.

Returning to the Nebraska at Texas A&M officiating team, Eichelberger's article noted that referee Greg Burks was also in finance, being at that time "a mutual fund regional sales director for New York-based RS Funds".

As we found at another source, those RS Funds were the subject of a global class action filed in 2004 for violation of the Securities Act of 1933 and the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 in a complaint alleging illegal and improper trading practices through wrongful late trading and/or market timing by preferred investors.

The global class action and derivative settlement was granted final approval on October 25, 2010 (the Huskers played Texas on October 16, 2010 in what is surely an unrelated event), according to Labaton Sucharow:

"On October 25, 2010, the Honorable J. Frederick Motz, of the United States District Court for the District of Maryland granted final approval to the global class action and derivative settlement of the In re Mutual Funds Investment Litigation., Bank of America/Nations sub-track No. 04-md-15862 (D. Md). There are 2 settlements in this Bank of America/Nations Funds sub-track: the Nations Settlement and the Canary Severed Settlement. Together, the Settlements resolve all securities, ERISA and derivative claims in this sub-track. "

The law firm in the case, Stull, Stull & Brody, directs us to the court-approved site at MutualFundSettlements.com which provides:

"This Court-approved website directs you to the other, more specific Court-approved websites relating to the proposed settlements reached in sixteen separate mutual fund families in the In re Mutual Funds Investment Litigation, MDL-1586 (D. Md.). By clicking on the links below, you can access the case-specific settlement websites for the following mutual fund families:

• Alger
• AllianceBernstein
• Allianz
• Bank of America/Nations
• Columbia
• Federated
• Invesco
• Janus
• MFS
• One Group/Bank One
• Pilgrim Baxter (PBHG)
• Putnam
• RS
• Schwab/Excelsior
• Deutschebank/Scudder
• Strong"

That settlement is presumably going to cost some people at those companies a lot of money.

We have no idea if this settlement affected any football official anywhere in the USA financially, but it if did, it might also affect that person's mental preparedness for football officiating.

There is also a further troublesome aspect, though we do not believe that it exists in this case. In Europe there have been recent betting scandals involving referees. We also have the recent case in the USA of NBA basketball officials being implicated in a gambling scandal. A former baseball star in 1987 bet on his team's baseball games while managing that major league team. College sports have also been beset by betting viz. gambling scandals in the course of the years.

We read up about the financial week prior to the Nebraska at Texas A&M game as follows at CNNMoney.com as Annalyn Censky, staff reporter, wrote:

"After a wild ride last week, stocks could be in for more volatility going into Thanksgiving."

It is always possible that financial events of the past week could affect the way that officials referee a ball game, equalling things out on players and coaches.

In Eichelberger's article, a member of the referee team discussed in that article, Rick DiBernardo, at the time "a mutual fund regional vice president for Old Mutual Investment Partners in Denver" was quoted as saying:

"?The markets have been doing so poorly, in a sense, this is our therapy.... Some people fish, some snow ski, some golf, this is how we heal from what?s going on in the markets.? "

In any case, we examined some of the other Big 12 games refereed this season by the same team of officials that refereed the Nebraska at Texas A&M game but found nothing unusual in the penalty assessments in those games. As a result, we think that betting, gambling and financial issues are not relevant in explaining the manner in which the game was refereed.

What about a Texas connection? Earlier this year, The West Texas Football Officials' Clinic took place on May 28-29, 2010 in El Paso, Texas and their staff included a couple of the officials from the Nebraska at Texas A&M game:

"Gene Semko (Big 12 Conference Side Judge, Multiple Bowl Games including 2008 BCS National Championship (Ohio State vs. LSU), 2007 Sugar Bowl, and 2005 and 2007 Big 12 Championships

"Greg Burks (Big XII Referee)"

That is a superficial Texas connection, surely meaningless in the context here. We found nothing online that might suggest an unusual referee loyalty to the State of Texas.

In the final analysis, barring new evidence, we suspect that personal circumstances and a lack of mental preparedness and discipline, if anything, may have influenced the referee(s) in the Nebraska at Texas A&M game to make calls that should not have been made, and not to make calls that should have been made.

Crossposted from SportPundit.

Full post as published by LawPundit on November 23, 2010 (boomark / email).