A Season Inside

by John Feinstein

  The difference in responsibility among the three officials in a game is minor. The referee runs the pregame meeting, throws the ball up for the center jump at the start of the game, and is responsible for getting the teams back on the floor after a time-out. The U-1 is responsible for the home team: getting them out of their huddle, controlling them if a fight breaks out. The U-2 does the same with the visitors.

  Like the teams, the officials always review the game before they go out to work it. Different officials use different methods of running a pregame meeting. Lembo likes to let the two umpires mention situations that should be looked for before he does any talking. He saves the thing he likes to talk about least for last.

  “God forbid, I mean God forbid, if we should have a fight, let’s break it up as fast as we can and then consult with each other before we adjudicate.”

  Forte nods. “Let’s watch the stuff off the ball very carefully,” he says. “A lot of times, especially with the pressure defense, that’s what gets things started.”

  All three officials know that a Georgetown game is very tough to work. Part of it is the Hoyas’ pressure defense, always trapping and slapping at the ball. But another part of it is that the shooting in Georgetown games is almost always poor on both sides. The Hoyas can’t shoot, but they can defend.

  “The more missed shots you have, the more rebounds you have and the more contact there is,” Forte says. “The hardest game to work is the kind with a lot of missed shots and no dominant rebounder.”

  This game has the potential to be hard.

  The pregame meeting over, the refs relax. Forte is talking about technicals. When officials talk about technicals they say, “I teed him up,” as in, “Coach so-and-so kicked his chair over so I had no choice and I teed him up.”

  Lembo is talking about the Georgetown—Pitt debacle of early January, Jerome Lane’s “intercepted” technical that kept Paul Evans from being ejected. “That was the worst game I ever worked in my life,” Lembo is saying. “I mean, right from the beginning. The kids were all over each other, the clocks didn’t work right for most of the game, it was really awful. I thought the game was never going to end.

  “Then, in that last minute, we had to tee up both coaches. First, Evans goes crazy and Jody [Silvester] and Jimmy [Burr] both tee him up. Then, I’m about to give him another when Lane comes along and says, ‘Come on, man, please give us a break. He already got two.’ I figured, okay, let it go.

  “Then the clock breaks again and John [Thompson] comes screaming out of the box. He was right about the clock so he was okay coming out of the box, but he was screaming and gesturing so much I had to tee him up, too. The whole thing was a nightmare.”

  Forte tells a story about a completely different kind of technical. “Last year my partner and I are working North Carolina at Notre Dame.” Forte always refers to Gerry Donaghy as his partner since they often work together in the ACC. “In the last minute, Notre Dame is going to win the game and, after a foul call, the fans go wild, throwing things on the floor. Gerry tells the PA to announce that if they don’t stop it’ll be a technical.

  “Next time there’s a whistle, they start throwing stuff again and the leprechaun comes onto the court. That’s it, Gerry tees him up. He goes over to the scorer and signals the tee. Digger [Phelps] comes over and he says, “Who is the tee on?’

  “Gerry says, ‘The leprechaun.’

  “Digger never misses a beat. He says, ‘The leprechaun is from Carolina.’

  “Gerry just looks at him and says, ‘Oh yeah? Then what’s that ND on his uniform?’ ”

  It is time to go. A security guard comes to escort them to the court. “If by some chance things get hectic,” he says, “we’ll take you out through the side tunnel.” Fine, the U-boat makes sure the guard knows to come back at the end of the half to open the door for them.

  On the way out, Forte delivers his nightly line: “Guys, let’s call ’em right, so we can sleep tonight.”

  Lembo laughs. “Let’s go paint a Picasso,” he says, and they walk onto the floor to the scattered boos that are as much a part of an official’s life as his whistle, Fox40 or otherwise.

  The game is, relatively speaking, an easy one, even though Georgetown shoots a putrid 32.5 percent for the game and the two teams combine for 41 turnovers. The only real problem is caused by the weather. During the day, the temperature in Philadelphia hit 65 degrees, a record for the date. Because of the warmth, the ice underneath the basketball floor at the Spectrum is melting and the floor is full of wet spots. From the first minute, players are slipping and sliding as if they are trying to run on ice.

  Early in the game, the officials call John Thompson and Rollie Massimino together to tell them they’re going to have to call all the traveling calls that will be caused by the wet floor. Letting the coaches know this early may keep them from becoming frustrated later.

  At halftime, with Villanova leading 34–27, the talk is about the floor. “I’m afraid to do anything but take baby steps,” Lembo said: “You slip now, you’re done for the season.”

  Forte is concerned about Villanova’s Rodney Taylor, who slipped coming down with a rebound and did a split, pulling something in his leg. “I just hope the kid isn’t hurt badly,” he says. “It’ll be a miracle if we get through this without a serious injury.”

  Somehow, they do. Villanova wins 64–58 and the three officials leave the floor the way they like to leave at game’s end: unnoticed. “Very good job,” Lembo says as the three men shake hands in the locker room. “I can’t think of anything we could have done differently.”

  “Nice job, guys,” the security guard says, bringing them postgame sodas.

  “We always hear that,” Forte says, “when the home team wins.” He is back in the car heading for Washington thirty minutes after the final buzzer. He will arrive at his friend’s house shortly after 1 A.M. and will stay up an extra ninety minutes, winding down and watching a tape of the game. By noon on Tuesday he will be on the road to Richmond to work Old Dominion-Richmond that night.

  “Good game,” he says, looking forward to it. “I’m with my buddy [John] Clougherty and my partner, Ron Foxcroft. Should be a good day.”

  February 2 … Richmond, Virginia

  Not even the power of the word “refs” can get Forte as close to the entrance of the Robins Center as he wants to get tonight.

  It is pouring rain when he and Ron Foxcroft pull into the parking lot and Forte wants to park the car on the sidewalk next to the back door of the arena. “Can’t let you do that,” a security guard says.

  “Oh come on, pal,” Forte says. “We’ll get soaked walking up from the lot. There’s no one using this door, anyway.”

  “Sorry,” the guard says, “I got orders.”

  Forte knows he is going to lose this argument. He can’t even tee the guy up. So he goes for a laugh line. “Let us park here and we’ll give you a couple of calls.”

  The guard, who is probably too wet to have a sense of humor, doesn’t even crack a smile. Forte retreats to the parking lot and he and Foxcroft sprint from there for the door.

  Inside, John Clougherty has already arrived, having driven up from his home in Raleigh. With Hank Nichols now semiretired to run the NCAA’s two-year-old officiating program, Forte and Clougherty are generally considered the top two officials in the country.

  They are friends, but there is also an unspoken sense of competition between them. One of them will be chosen to represent the U.S. in the Olympics next fall.

  Before focusing on the game, the three men exchange gossip. There are two members of the fraternity fighting cancer, Pete Pavia and Charlie Vacca. Both have had to stop working, at least temporarily, to receive treatment. “I worked with Charlie in Hawaii over Christmas,” Forte says. “He seemed fine. Then I heard he had an attack down in Alabama and Lou Grillo saved his life.”

  Forte has heard right. Driving through an ice storm after a game at Alabama, Vacca had lost consciousne
ss in the backseat of the car Grillo was driving. Grillo pulled the car over, yanked Vacca out of the car and tried to find a heartbeat. Finding none, Grillo administered CPR. Vacca started breathing again. Fortunately, because there was little chance of getting an emergency vehicle to them in the horrible weather, a passing car told them they were little more than a mile from a hospital. Vacca recovered.

  Later, telling the story, Grillo would shake his head and say, “Actually, we were lucky in a lot of ways. Suppose a police car had happened by and seen this black guy sitting on top of a white guy pounding on him? That wouldn’t have been too good a deal for me.”

  Forte is the referee tonight. He goes through all the various possibilities, talking in referees’ lingo. As in most professions, referees have a language of their own. Some of the slang expressions they use are things like:

  Freight-training: When a trail official races downcourt and takes a call away from the lead official who is in better position.

  Pop the whistle: Blowing the whistle when you think maybe you shouldn’t.

  Spraying: Too many calls.

  Phantoms: Never make a call if you can’t see what happened. If you call something that isn’t there, you’re making phantom calls. A good official will resist the urge to pop the whistle and in doing so won’t be guilty of spraying or calling a bunch of phantoms.

  Rubber-banding: A good crew rubber-bands, all three men moving, in effect, together, so that they are always in position.

  Straight-lining: Officials need angles to make a call. If you have a straight line between yourself and the play, the odds are you can’t see what’s going on.

  A marriage: Tonight’s game is a marriage between the Sun Belt Conference and the Colonial Athletic Association. In other words, a split crew of officials.

  Laramie: Strictly a Forteism as in, “You give the head coach more Laramie than the assistants.” Laramie is rope.

  Tonight, Foxcroft has a play for Forte. “Saw it on television last night,” he says. “Guy shoots a three-point shot. Defender deflects it. It goes in. Two points or three?”

  “Two,” Forte says. “The three-point shot is dead as soon as the ball is deflected.”

  Foxcroft and Clougherty shake their heads. “Wrong. It’s still three. The latest Atlantic 10 directive talks about it.”

  Forte is already reaching for his rule book. “That’s wrong,” he says. “I’ll prove it.” He is still looking through the rule book when it is time to go onto the floor. As they leave, he presents Clougherty with a new Fox40, complete with a ridge that has been added for comfort.

  “It’s the new improved Fox Forty,” Forte says.

  “Yeah, just like Kellogg’s corn flakes,” Foxcroft says. “It means we can raise the price.”

  Even though this is a nonconference game, it is an important one to both schools. Each is scrambling for postseason position. Richmond is 15–3, Old Dominion 13–5. Early in the game, Richmond Coach Dick Tarrant is on all three officials. “I think they let an old guy [fifty–seven] like me get away with more than a young guy,” Tarrant says later. “I take advantage of it. Why not? You need every edge in this game.”

  During one argument, Forte points down at Tarrant’s foot, which is across the line of the coaching box.

  “Dick,” he says, “you’ve got a wing tip on the line.”

  “Joe,” Tarrant shoots back, “I’m glad the game’s so easy you’ve got time to look at my feet.”

  Forte laughs. Officials will often cut a coach extra slack if he says something funny. Hank Nichols, generally considered the referee of the last twenty years, tells a story about an argument he had one night with Jim Valvano. “Jimmy was all over me about a call. So, finally, I said, ‘Okay Jimmy, that’s enough. I don’t want to hear another word.’

  “Jimmy says to me, ‘Hank, can you tee me for what I’m thinking?’

  “I said, ‘No Jimmy, I can’t tee you for what you’re thinking.”

  “And he says, ‘Okay then, I think you suck.’ I had to let him go. It was too good a line to tee him up for.”

  Richmond controls the game until a flurry of missed free throws in the closing minutes makes it close. The Spiders finally win, 82–75, after a drawn-out last few minutes.

  “I didn’t think it would ever end,” Clougherty says.

  “Tom Young never quits,” Foxcroft answers.

  Forte has his head buried in the rule book, still trying to prove he is right about the deflected three-point shot. He is well on his way to losing his second argument of the night. No matter really. He is happy with the game.

  “Last night, when I looked at the tape of Villanova–Georgetown I noticed that when I was in the center position I was much too close to the play. I was so close on a couple of plays the kids could have passed me the ball. Tonight, I backed off. It was better.”

  He is back in Washington by midnight. On Wednesday, he will fly to Raleigh to work Virginia–N.C. State. “Good game,” he says. “The kind that gets you pumped up very easily.”

  He will be up early in the morning, though. “I want to call around and see what I can find out about that three-point deflection play.”

  February 3 … Raleigh, North Carolina

  As soon as Forte’s plane lands, he races across the street to the Triangle Inn, the airport motel, knowing that Nolan Fine and Tom Fraim are there. He has confirmed that he was wrong on the three-point deflection play, but he wants to see if they will answer the question correctly or not.

  They both come up with the right answer. Fine is in town to work Duke–Georgia Tech in Durham. Fraim will be with Forte and Rusty Herring at Virginia–State. They leave Fine to his afternoon nap and head off in search of food.

  Once again, Forte is working with a strong crew. Fraim is retiring at the end of the season after twenty-three years as a ref. He worked the infamous regional final in 1987, during which Bob Knight pounded the courtside telephone after Fraim teed him up for coming out of the coaches’ box. Fraim’s only regret is that he didn’t tee him up again after the outburst.

  Rusty Herring, the third official, is a rising young referee. He reached the Final Four for the first time last year and drives a car with a license plate that reads, “Luv2Ref.” His wife’s license plate reads, “LuvARef.”

  Fraim is the referee tonight. His pregame talk is very detailed. He even has notes that he refers to. Fraim is into details: “On a foul-out, make sure the guy coming in is coming in for the guy who fouled out … If there’s a time-out called after a foul-out, make sure they sub before the time-out … Be careful administering free throws. Make sure you get the right shooter. Watch for guys going into the lane. We’ve been getting beat on that … Let’s have good visible counts … Try not to get straight-lined … Remember to suck on the whistle sometimes. Let’s not pop it too much in this game … Make sure you give the player’s number on a time-out call.”

  This last detail is one of those little-known things about officiating. Why does it matter which player on the floor called a time-out? Answer: If there is confusion later in the game about whether a time-out was called by a team or by television, there is a specific reference in the scorer’s book as to which player called the time-out.

  Fraim also makes reference to the emotions involved in calling a technical foul. “If we tee someone up, let’s help each other. There’s always that extra shot of adrenaline when you do it, so let’s not look dumb by going to the wrong foul line or something. Let’s call it, administer it, and get it over with.”

  Technicals are taken very seriously in the ACC. Any time an official calls a technical in an ACC game he is required to call ACC Supervisor of Officials Fred Barakat that night to tell him what happened and why he called the tee.

  Fraim adds one more thing: “If a coach comes out of the box because he’s coaching, give him some leeway. If he’s bitching, it’s automatic, tee him up.”

  Forte, drinking his nightly ration of pregame honey, has one more thought when
Fraim is finished: “Let’s not call anything cheap early. Let’s talk to the kids, rather than whistle them. This is an important game so the coaches might be hyper, especially early.”

  Reynolds Coliseum is slightly less than sold out. Although Virginia is 4–2 in league play, they are still thought of as a doormat. For State, this is a big game. The Wolfpack is 3–2 in the ACC and has a four-game losing streak against Virginia. The Cavaliers always give them a hard time.

  Tonight is no different. No one leads by more than four points during the first half. Seven minutes in, when Herring calls a foul on Charles Shackleford, Valvano is up screaming. Forte stands directly in front of him, facing the floor, saying out of the side of his mouth, “Easy Jim, easy.” He was right. Valvano is hyper.

  When Herring calls an illegal screen on the last play of the half that allows Virginia to tie the game at 39–39, Valvano screeches all the way across the court, heading for the locker room.

  In the locker room, Fraim asks Herring about the last call. “The screen gave them an open jump shot, Tom,” Herring says. “I didn’t have any choice.”

  “Absolutely right,” Fraim says.

  In preseason clinics, officials were instructed endlessly about advantage/disadvantage. The point being that not all contact is a foul, that if something mildly illegal happens that doesn’t affect the play, it should be no-called. The good officials are living by the rule. A lot of bad ones still call every touch foul they see.

  “I almost popped the whistle on your toss, Tom,” Forte tells Fraim. “It was a little short.”

  “Good thing you didn’t,” Fraim says laughing. “At my age I can only get it up good once a night.”

  “It’s a pretty slow tempo,” Forte notes. “That means every call is an important one.”

  The game is close until State goes on a 10–2 run for a 62–52 lead. Virginia comes right back with an 8–0 run. The game goes to the wire. A Mel Kennedy three-pointer cuts State’s lead to 71–69 with 1:14 left. But Vinny Del Negro hits a crucial drive with thirty-five seconds to go that ices it and State wins 75–69.