The ACC made a little bit of officiating news in March, as the league announced a new alliance with the American Athletic Conference (AAC). The stated goal of the officiating alliance is to create a deeper pool of officials at the disposal of both leagues, while also promoting more efficiency and consistency in training and evaluation.
The idea is that refs in both the ACC and the AAC will have more eyeballs of fellow trained professional officials evaluating their work. They will get more advice, more criticism. More ideas on how to improve the quality of their officiating.
They will get more feedback on things like positioning. How to make sure you’re in the right place at the right time as an official. And precise explanations on the ever-evolving rule changes that come with each new season. These rule changes are a subtle but annual rite of passage each summer for college football officials to thoroughly learn and understand.
Deeper pool of referees
One of the big theoretical benefits of this alliance is that both the ACC and AAC will be better covered for its expansive roster of games. College games are being played these days on Friday nights and even occasional Monday nights, such as Labor Day, along with the traditional Saturday and Thursday contests. With a deep bench of AAC officials available, the concept is that the ACC won’t be spread quite as thin as they may have been in the past. They will also be better prepared for games that wind up getting rescheduled for natural disasters like hurricanes, which affected multiple ACC teams last fall.
Another potential advantage of this new alliance is the concept of variety and diversity.
ACC football fans have long loathed having certain officials work their team’s games. Whether it was fair or not, Ron Cherry seemed to take a disproportionate amount of fans’ wrath over the years. Following the infamous Duke-Miami game in 2012, few Duke fans wanted to see Jerry Magallanes and his crew working a Blue Devils game.
With new officials comes a new opportunity for the game’s focus to return to the players. It’s often been said that with the best officials, you don’t even know they’re there. By bringing in AAC officials, that aren’t as well-known among ACC fans, and by constantly rotating officials week to week between the two leagues, there won’t be as much built-in resentment with certain officials and certain officiating crews. The feeling that one school gets the shaft for having this official work their team’s game, or gaining an advantage by not having this ref work another game.
Potential pitfalls of the deal
There are some logistical problems that could arise in such an official-sharing scenario, if the two leagues ever have an officiating shortage.
Officials, particularly at the highest levels of college football, get paid handsomely for their work. Up to $3,000 for big games such as bowls and league championship games. But it’s part-time work. Almost all of them have other full-time work.
If the two leagues ever get spread too thin – particularly on those November Saturdays, when it seems that most everyone is playing within a few hours of each other – there might be occasional scheduling and traveling strains.
But as long as the two leagues continually make sure they have an adequate number of trained officials on call at a moment’s notice to work games, this potential concern should be mitigated. In fact, there should mostly be a surplus of available officials accessible to either the ACC or AAC at any given time.
ACC supervisor of officials Dennis Hennigan will control the assignments, hiring and firing, discipline, and training of the league’s officials in conjunction with this new alliance.
Hennigan was a well-respected college football official for 25 years, who officiated 17 years at the FBS level, and officiated LSU’s national championship victory over Oklahoma in 2004. He has been coordinating the ACC’s officiating since 2015. Hennigan is also a licensed lawyer in the state of New York who worked for years for a prominent law firm in Syracuse. So he’s got familiarity with more than just what happens on the field as an official.
So long as the ACC/AAC officiating alliance continually generates a fresh crop of eager, capable officials – as the program is intended to do – there seems to be a variety of benefits. Fans won’t be quite as focused on the officials calling their team’s games, because there won’t, at least in theory, be the same ol’ refs calling the same games, over and over.