Referees, such as Michael Eggers, work for conferences during the season but fall under the authority of the NCAA during the tournament. (Photo: Kyle Terada, USA TODAY Sports) John Adams has the best — and most stressful — seat in the house during the first two days of the NCAA tournament. He'll sit in a control room in Atlanta, planted firmly in the host city of the Final Four. He'll watch every game simultaneously, keeping tabs on calls officials make and miss. If he wants to see a specific clip, he can holler for a producer to cue it up. RELATED: How officials advance through the NCAA tournament Access to all the games, all the time, sounds like the ideal setup for March Madness. But when you're the NCAA coordinator of officials, every moment is also a nanosecond away from controversy. One missed call, and the chorus of boos and criticism begins. And, for the first time all season, there's one target. During college basketball's regular season, officials are independent contractors. They choose the leagues they want to work for and how many games they want to do. They answer to league officiating coordinators, who are limited in their authority, including not being able to levy fines. But now, as the season moves from the conference tournaments this weekend to the NCAA tournament starting Tuesday, the entire officiating system will change. After a careful evaluation and a season-long vetting process, the chosen referees fall under the direction of Adams. They no longer affiliate with conferences; instead, they are assigned to crews with officials from all over the country; some they know, others they don't. They're working games of coaches they know and coaches they don't. NCAA COACHES: The technological tie that binds college basketball BRACKET PREDICTION: Seeding all 68 teams Coaches say the game is officiated differently in the tournament. Some say it's better; others say it's tighter. Referees, like teams, must perform well to advance to the later rounds of the tournament, so they enforce more rules as the rule book states them. "Coaches want there to be, fans want there to be, the media wants there to be, officials want there to be an expectation of predictability," Adams says. "What I don't want is, we get to the NCAA tournament and all of the sudden a different style of officiating exists. "What's really good in college basketball is styles of play, ranging from Butler that plays a reasonably deliberate game to Indiana that plays a fast-pace, high-tempo, high-scoring game. … The worst thing we can have is styles of officiating." PREVIOUSLY: Coach K's outburst with official, fans Adams has led initiatives to bring more consistency and uniformity to regular-season officiating, including sending memos and creating weekly instructional videos to help educate referees about controversial calls. He doesn't want phrases such as "BigTen officiating" or "Big 12 officiating." He wants a seamless transition to the NCAA tournament. "What they're trying to get throughout the country is uniformity of calls," Wisconsin coach Bo Ryan says. "This contact is a foul. This is a foul. This is not a foul. "I think in the NCAA tournament, it did help if you were a more physical team and other teams weren't used to the physicality. I think they're trying to eliminate that." No secrets, no mystery John Adams, the NCAA's coordinator of officials, has been on the job for five years and is trying to create more uniformity in officiating. (Photo: NCAA) College basketball officials work like coaches, constantly watching video of their games and identifying their weaknesses. Some league coordinators, who evaluate referees' performances each game, even implement weekly homework assignments. West Coast Conference coordinator Dave Libbey says his officials are given clips of tough calls each week and are instructed to make the call and include explanations in an e-mail. "There are no secrets, really," says Michael Irving, a Los Angeles law enforcement official who has officiated Division I games for 16 years and works the Pac-12, WCC, Mountain West, Western Athletic Conference and Big West. "There is no mystery. If there's an area you need to improve upon, (information) is given to the official to give him feedback to know what he needs to do to get better." Five years ago, Atlantic Coast Conference coordinator John Clougherty implemented a program of using five outside observers with officiating backgrounds (the NBA and other leagues) to grade all ACC games. "They have no dog in the fight," says Clougherty, who has worked 12 Final Fours. "They're just looking at plays. Correct calls, incorrect calls and no calls incorrect. We get a pretty clear picture of how our officials are doing at the end of the year, and we can track those. … Here's the accountability." The evaluations also track tendencies. For example, they'll show if an official is prone to miss traveling calls or illegal screens. Officials then receive feedback about areas of improvement but don't see their grades. Syracuse coach Jim Boeheim yells at official John Cahill, right, during the first half of a quarterfinal game against the Pittsburgh Panthers during the Big East tournament at Madison Square Garden. (Photo: Brad Penner, USA TODAY Sports) At the start of the season, Adams and his four regional advisers compile a watch list of officials who they and league coordinators think are among the best. By mid-February, they will have seen more than 400 games, evaluating the officials on more than 30 criteria. Officials are then divided into two lists: "Consider for the NCAA tournament" or "Do not consider." Toward the end of February, each league nominates officials for NCAA tournament work. Every automatic qualifying league gets one guaranteed official, but Adams and his crew make sure those recommendations are people they have evaluated. Candidates also must meet the following criteria: Get 85% of questions correct on a rules test; Officiate at least 25 Division I regular-season men's games; Attend a regional officiating clinic that the NCAA puts on; And subscribe to the NCAA men's basketball officiating website, where they go online once a week and watch training videos that Adams posts. Adams emphasizes a player's freedom of movement, urging officials to call fouls — early — on players who disrupt that. Coaches see inconsistency Despite assessment procedures, officiating is largely subjective. Even with the training and feedback available for officials, some coaches don't see consistency between leagues. Most of that, they say, comes down to familiarity between officials and the teams they're used to seeing in league play. "I don't think the officials are doing necessarily a poor job," Florida coach Billy Donovan says. "But when you have a group of officials that are being instructed by the SEC supervisor, (they know) the conference and what is going on. Maybe there's a team that gets away with a lot of grabbing and holding, so there's an awareness. Maybe there's a team that flops too much. Maybe there's a team where the post play is way too physical. There's an awareness of that in the league. "I couldn't tell you what those things are in the ACC, the Big12 and the Pac-12. It's all different. "Everybody is all over the place. You could have a team play out west and have west coast officials that you've never seen before. They officiate the game totally differently. I think that's a problem." In theory, knowing a team's tendencies shouldn't affect officiating. The perceived inconsistency comes when certain teams are not whistled for certain actions that get called in other games in other leagues. "If there's illegal physical contact in the Big East, it should be called the same as illegal contact in the Pac-12," ESPN analyst Jay Bilas says. "Those fouls should not be officiated differently. Officials are answering not to one boss but to all these different bosses. Their interpretations might be different. Their wants and needs for their particular league might be different. They want to get their games off on time. They don't want them marred by too many foul calls. "The officials are serving different masters. I don't blame the officials. I blame officiating." Bilas, like some coaches, also blames the system: A collection of independent contractors governed by leagues (but ultimately, themselves) until the NCAA tournament, when they're governed by Adams. "When the NCAA tournament starts, there is centralized authority," Bilas says. "Officials move forward based on what the selection committee and John Adams' judgement. They're going to do it (his) way. There's an immediate hammer on them. They have immediate accountability. There's no immediate accountability during the season." Art of advancing To determining which who advances in the NCAA tournament, officials are evaluated on their calls, mobility, communication skills and the way they handle high-pressure situations. Did they deal with an obscure call correctly? Did they make the right call with the game on the line? "Normally, the tournament is better officiated, or at least it is really consistent," Kentucky coach John Calipari says. "You not only get the best teams, but you get the best officials." Calipari says that happens because officials, like teams, want to advance to the next round. In order to do so, they need to make textbook calls. Teams and coaches know they need to adapt to however the game is being called. It might be tight — last year's Syracuse-Ohio State Elite Eight game featured 67 free throw attempts — and no coach wants to see a star player whistled for fouls early that might force him to ride the bench. "Is it different? Yes," Georgetown coach John Thompson III says. "The guys that ref us on a consistent basis (know) the flow of your team, they understand what you're trying to do. I think that that's the beauty of the tournament. As a coach and more importantly probably, as players, as with any game, you have to adjust and adapt to how the game is being called. You can't go in assuming anything." Officials who are unfamiliar with the teams in games they're working talk to one another about tendencies. They talk about what they've seen out of these teams on television. They compare them to other teams in games they've worked. About 90 minutes before the start of the game, officials have a pre-game meeting in their dressing room. They discuss all of that, and they talk about obscure things that might happen in the game. Those referees who don't know each other get a bit more familiar with one another. "There are more similarities than differences," says Libbey, who worked eight Final Fours, and that carries into preparation. Follow NBA model? Professional sports leagues hire officials. There are unions, salary structures, fines and everything else that goes along with full-time jobs. Compared with the nearly 1,000 referees who officiate college basketball during the regular season, the 60 or so NBA referees seems like a more manageable group. "We've got a multimillion-dollar business here, and we're dealing with officials like we're hiring parking attendants," Bilas says. "You give them a game check, and it's an independent contractor deal? Give them a contract. "Could you imagine if the NBA had independent contractors — all the different divisions of the NBA, NFL had their own officials? That would be ludicrous. It's all under one umbrella, so they're employees. They're going to do what they're told to do, or they'll be suspended or fired. We don't have that." A centralized system is likely not in the works, but some argue it should be. Adams says he accepts the current setup as long as conferences are on board with creating consistency throughout the nation. "It's inefficient, but I also think it's a system that, while it has its flaws, tilts in favor of the conferences managing their own in-season officiating," Adams says. "That's fine with me. The closer that their officiating programs look like the NCAA's model, the better it is once the tournament starts." Villanova coach Jay Wright says he thinks Adams' attempts at communicating more with officials and coaches have helped get everyone closer to being on the same page. Wright likes the current system, seeing the value in officials dealing with someone who knows their league, instead of a national entity. But most of the coaches interviewed by USA TODAY Sports disagreed. They yearn for more accountability, pointing to the NCAA tournament as an example of more consistent results. Libbey, the WCC coordinator, says it would be easier to have everything under one roof but it's simpler for the NCAA to schedule and organize officials for three weeks, not a five-month regular season. Donovan says he would love to see the NCAA take over officiating but understands that a lot of officials have other jobs, too. "The officials may say, 'I don't want to do that,'" Donovan says. "I'm probably talking out of turn, as it relates to their livelihood and what they want to do. But for the benefit of the game, if you had officials do two or three games a week and they were under some kind of contract and salary by the NCAA, that might be a better way to go." Referees are paid by the game. Those working in top conferences receive $2,500 for each appearance, according to the Associated Press. Adams says this is typically the main source of income for referees who call more than 60 games a year. It might be an imperfect system, but officials and coaches say there's been progress toward consistency and uniformity across the nation during Adams' five-year tenure at the NCAA. Does progress mean it's as effective as it could be? "I respect the fact that people say it's going to be a process, a slow process," Bilas says. "But the building's on fire. We can't have a process for putting it out. We need to put it out." PHOTOS: ANGRY COACHES' FUNNY BODY LANGUAGE Story Highlights
