The topic of bad officiating is a constant in all sports, but especially in college football, as it seems like each weekend, a crew changes an entire game with terrible calls. This week, it became an even bigger discussion as the SEC permanently suspended referee Ken Williamson after the Georgia Vs Auburn game that left everyone calling for serious changes to college football officiating.
The question always becomes, how does this issue get fixed, as poor officiating has been an issue forever, with no real solution being found. If the NCAA and each conference truly wants to change the narrative around its officials, there's truly only one way this can get fixed.
College Football officials should be full-time employees
If the NCAA and the conferences want to bring an end to the discussion around their officials, the best fix would be to make the crews all full-time employees. When the season ends, most officials move on to other jobs, and when the season rolls back around, no one should be surprised that they're getting calls wrong.
Making the officials full-time employees would cost more, but everyone would quickly see how much better the games would be called. Making each official a full-time employee would bring a new level of accountability to the sport, which would force the officials to be better.
Instant replay and reviews have put a band-aid on the issue, helping mask some of the missed calls. The current punishments for the officials are suspensions and fines, yet after the slap on the wrist these officials return to the field where they inevitably miss more calls.
These officials should be spending the entire year working on how they call games, and it would make the sport leap and bounds better. Once the season ends, the true work should begin as these officials should be going through year-round training. The officials shouldn't just go over their games or the games in their league, but they should be forced to watch all the things everyone missed.
If these officials were full-time employees, the idea of being punished would bring a new level of accountability, as the officials could lose their jobs. In any other job, repeated poor performance leads to an employee being fired and the same pressure on officials would force them all to take the job more seriously.
The question becomes whether or not the NCAA and each conference will pay the extra money to hire these officials.? The sport has never been driven by money more than it is right now and protecting the investment with the right officials seems like a great price to pay.