According to the NCAA, about 40 percent of the $846 million it generated in revenue in 2010-11 went to championships, programs and services. That’s about $338 million. Wouldn’t it be possible to extract maybe $500,000 from $338 million to pay officials well enough to prohibit them from working anyplace else as long as they are still in the NCAA tournament? If officials were paid $2,500 the first weekend, $5,000 the second weekend and $10,000 the third weekend, the NCAA probably wouldn’t go broke. And it would give Adams a better chance of setting some kind of maximum number for regular season games officials could work.
“Certainly it would help if we made the financial incentive more attractive,” Adams said. “And I believe in competition. These guys are competing to advance just like the teams are. The more of that the better as far as I’m concerned.
Those new standards might explain why some older, highly respected officials — among them Jim Burr and Tim Higgins, who have worked 27 Final Fours between them — aren’t in the tournament this year. It also might explain why some officials who have worked a lot of games this season didn’t advance out of the first weekend, even though their work is highly respected by most. One of them is Brian Dorsey, a familiar face to ACC fans and this season’s leader in total games worked to date — 100. Dorsey’s season probably isn’t over: He worked the Old Dominion-Mercer CIT game Wednesday night in Norfolk.
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