By John Feinstein
Special to washingtonpost.com
Tuesday, January 1, 2008 1:07 AM

The NCAA hired David Parry last week to coordinate college football officiating, a bold step forward that comes only 20 years after Hank Nichols was hired to do the same job in basketball.

Those folks in Indianapolis are quick thinkers.

Maybe the first thing the new coordinator can do is make sure that everyone working as a college football official actually knows the rules.

The bowl season -- which is slightly longer and a good deal less meaningful than the regular season -- began Dec. 20 with Navy hooking up with Utah in the Poinsettia Bowl in an entertaining, competitive and -- as with all college football games -- endless evening. Late in the game, with Utah up 28-25, one of the Utes fumbled the ball as he dove for the goal line and the ball bounced off the pylon.

That's a touchback. Navy would get the ball at the 20 yard line.

I knew that. I would say a large chunk of those watching knew that. But the replay official in the press box did not know the rule. He saw the ball hit the pylon and told the officials on the field that the ball had been fumbled out of bounds and should be spotted inside the 1-yard line.

Maybe if the referee bothered to ask the replay official if the ball hit the pylon, especially since Navy's coaches were screaming about it, the officials would have gotten the play right.

That didn't happen. How much that poor ruling cost Navy is hard to say and isn't the point here. You can't have officials who don't know the rules. The amateurish level of college football officiating has been an embarrassment for years and seems to only be getting worse.

In the Holiday Bowl -- if you are looking for references to the corporate names plastered all over the bowls, go to ESPN where (corporate name) bowl week brings you the (corporate name) bowl presented by (corporate name) and brought to you by (corporate name, corporate name, corporate name) -- Mack Brown's stepson, who surprisingly enough is employed by Mack Brown, stepped onto the field during an Arizona State fumble and may or may not have touched the ball.

It took the officials twelve minutes to sort the play out and they were still confused about what down should be done after they ruled the ball had been touched.

Again, all sorts of questions come to mind: why wasn't unsportsmanlike conduct ruled immediately for people being on the field during a play when the Texas bench had already been warned once for not being far enough back on the sidelines? Why does anything take 12 minutes to decide in a football game when you can change your car insurance in 15 minutes?

College football officiating stinks. In fact, college basketball officiating -- a much harder game to call -- is a lot better than football officiating in large part because Nichols has worked extremely hard to tighten the reins and make officials accountable.

Unfortunately, one thing Nichols can't control is how much top officials work, since they are assigned by conference supervisors and not by Nichols. Most of them work virtually every night because they are in demand and no one says to them, "Whoa, you can't work one night in Hawaii and the next night in Florida without being tired."

That, by the way, is not hyperbole. In November, Ed Hightower, a fine official and a good man, worked the Duke-Marquette championship game in Maui on the night before Thanksgiving, got on a plane, flew through two time zones, changed planes, flew through three more time zones and then worked George Mason-Kansas State in Orlando less than 21 hours after the game in Maui ended.

There's no way any official should be allowed to work on a schedule like that.

It is time for the NCAA to take control of officiating in both football and basketball. It needs to -- gasp! -- spend some money and hire a core of fulltime officials for both football and basketball. Pay them a reasonable amount of money so they don't feel the need to overwork and then hold them accountable for their work.

The first thing the NCAA will say is it can't afford to hire full-time officials because of benefits packages, insurance and things like that. Bologna. The NCAA and its member schools are flush, in spite of all their cries of poverty. One rule change would produce all the money needed to finance fulltime officials: forbid home football teams from staying in a hotel the night before a game.

Talk about needless expense and excess. Coaches insist that players must stay together in a hotel to get a good night's sleep. Please. All you have to do is let the rest of the student body know it is important that the boys get their sleep and they will be left alone in their dorms. If you want to have coaches do bed checks, fine. But imagine how much money would be saved if you eliminate paying for 100 (or more) hotel rooms six or seven times each season at all 119 division I-A schools. If getting sleep for the players at home becomes difficult, some big-time coaches might even schedule an occasional non-conference road game.

Once the money is there, officials should become full-time employees. They should be required to take a test on all the rules before they are allowed to work. They should be subjected to penalties when they make a mistake, the more egregious the error, the more egregious the penalty. Not knowing the rules should be at least a one-year suspension, if not a firing offense.

In basketball, officials should be limited to working no more than four nights a week. Their travel should be set up so that they aren't traveling all night through time zones to work the next night.

Football officials should be assigned to postseason games based on the quality of their work, not on a rotation system. In basketball, conference supervisors send reports throughout the year to Nichols, who then does the best he can to pick postseason officials based on merit.

Also, the officials should be accountable to the public. If players and coaches have to answer questions after they make a mistake, officials should have to do the same. Initially, the officials in the Poinsettia Bowl refused comment on their screw-up. Finally, after bowl officials pushed them because the mistake made was so obvious, they put out a statement admitting an error had been made.

No one was allowed to ask any questions though, like, "Did the officials on the field ask the replay official if the ball hit the pylon?" or, the simpler question: "How in the world could you not know the rule?" or, "Why didn't you ask for help?" The same thing applies to the officials of the Holiday Bowl: "Why wasn't Texas given an instant misconduct penalty for having people on the field during a play?"

In truth, it would help officials most of the time to be able to explain themselves. It would make them more sympathetic to the public, because we would hear their voices the way we hear the voices of players and coaches.

One other thing college football needs to change right now that won't cost any money: the first down rule. The notion of stopping the clock after every first down is ludicrous. It should only be stopped in the last two minutes of the half and the last two minutes of the game. College football games are wildly entertaining but take way too long, especially during bowl season when ESPN doesn't let most games kick-off until 8:10 on the east coast, meaning games drag on until midnight and beyond.

If the first down rule were changed, it would take 10 to 15 minutes off of every game. Sure, there would be fewer plays, but there are already plenty to go around.

And, if the officials ever learned all the rules and how to run a game without 12-minute delays and without going to the replay booth on every other call, we'd all enjoy the games more.

There's no reason for officiating to be this bad in a sport this good.