Just a guess, but I suspect Hess heard them clearly, and realized they were probably right. Like a child who sticks his fingers in his ears when scolded or corrected, Hess threw a little tantrum and had his critics removed.
Any discipline by the ACC toward Hess should, in my opinion, be made public. Even though Corch and Googs probably didnt pay for their seats, how would you have felt if
you had been the one thrown out after paying good money for a ticket.
I don't exactly remember what the seat license says on the back of the ticket, but it probably does not give the event holder carte blanche to throw a person out, and in this case
it wasn't the event holder but the ref. Probably Corch and Googs will not pursue it, but if it was me and I had paid good money for a ticket, Hess, Clougherty, Swofford, and others would
be raising their right hand in a public forum explaining themselves.
Wouldnt the resutling media circus be fun!
I didn't read OPK's "understanding-Karl-Hess" comment to mean he believed Hess had a longstanding beef with these players.
Rather, innocent, non-profane criticism from folks who know the game and played the game at a very high level probably burns Hess's ears more than a blistering, profane criticism from Joe Fan.
espn certainly made their apology public regarding the tasteless Jeremy Lin headline...
I'm not a particularly big Teddy V. fan, mostly b/c I think he's full of himself and has too much of an ego on the floor. That said, the NCAA thinks highly enough of him to have him refereeing late into March many years. I'm 99% sure he the '10 title game verse Butler, and thought he was pretty solid in that game, actually.
Al Featherston offers his perspective on the Wolfpack Dilemma:
http://www.dukebasketballreport.com/articles/?p=43618
Here's a couple of snippets:
Quote:
Wow … it was a bad week to be an N.C. State fan.
Quote:
The ACC’s initial response – criticizing Hess only for not following proper protocol – is ludicrously inadequate. Unless there is more evidence that we have not seen, he should be suspended for his bad judgment – if not retired.
I have been saying for years that Hess is horrible. The fact that you can say his name and all ACC basketball fans knows him is the problem. We have a running joke in my house that for any game he is officiating how long it takes before he gets his name mentioned or has a video review....usually takes less than 6-7 mins of game time.
But right now, after seeing him called "Rabbit Ears" by Corchiani and Googs...the only mental image I have is an arena full of students/fans wearing those headbands with rabbit ears on them....hahahahahahahaa FYI...they are currently on sale in the $1 bins at your local Target store....perfect timing with Easter approaching.
That would be a classic sight.
ARo24
no ACC fan wants to see Hess officiating their game, because they know he will affect the game some how. might be in their favor, but equal chance it will not.
gots to go!!
That's fair. I think it still boils down to the fact that it's hess' word against Debbie Yow. The book stipulates (as the ACC pointed out) that it is up to the judgement of the official if someone needs to be tossed. If Hess told the ACC "I thought they were being excessive" then the ACC has no choice but to trust him. The ACC league people weren't there. There weren't cameras picking up what the 2 guys said all game.
Reminds me of the line from a few good men, "It's not what I believe, but what I can prove." The league may have every reason to believe that Hess was out of line in tossing the guys, but they can't prove it. And reprimanding an employee/contractor for something you can't prove happened is just singing out for a lawsuit.
FWIW - The NC State Athletics Department on Sunday morning reached out to members of the 1989 ACC Regular Season Championship team (which includes Googs and Corch) and asked them if they could make to the UNC game to be accept the inaugural "Wolfpack Unlimited" award for refusing to accept the status quo.
Googs and Corch are both members of that team.
Say what you want, at least Debbie Yow understands there are limits to what she can say on the record but that there are also lots of other ways to express our feelings. No word on whether or not Karl Hess was invited.
It should be the refs' job to *not* be noticed. I think that's how you can say that a ref is good or not. It seems in this day that we have too many refs that want to be part of the action. And people now almost expect it-which shouldn't happen. I'm not sure how often refs get in-season reviews-if it's after every game or every few games or whatever, but I think the powers that be need to do a better job reminding referees that their job is to call the game as the rules dictate.
NCSU did not win the "1989 ACC Championship". That honor went to unc. Unfortunate, but true. I'm slightly embarassed the front page makes this mistake.
The Pack did win the 1989 ACC regular-season championship, however. Or, if you wish, they finished first during the regular season. But they were not ACC champions that year.
My thinking is that the ref is there to enforce the rules of the game, not to police the fans. That should be the job of the arena staff. Hess probably has set himself up for far worse badgering by fans now because now the fans know that:
a; he hears them and
b; they can get into his head...
He would have been much better off to have ignored Tom and Chris or at least quitely asked that a stadium official go and warn them to calm down. Hess is going to be hearing a lot more heckling now than he would have IMO. Just another example of a poor judgement call on his part.
My understanding was that typically, there are ACC representatives at all games. Does anyone know if this is still true? I'm not familiar with where those seats would be in the RBC Center, so don't know if they would have been close enough to tell what was going on.
In any case, Googs is, in fact, "excessively" tall, so Hess has ironclad logic on his side.
Here's a direct quote from Adam Gold's blog: "First, it should be known that Karl Hess is one of the best, if not the best, officials in the Atlantic Coast Conference -- if not all of college basketball."
Yeah, I know - it IS Adam Gold, after all.
Link: http://www.wralsportsfan.com/voices/blogpost/10755429/
Agreed. Hess is one of the few refs that I have specifically noticed making horrible calls in games and in general over reacting to situations on court. This only supports that fact that he is one of the worst refs in the game. And not just for Duke, he makes bad calls both ways. Horrible, horrible ref IMO.