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Message: <blockquote data-quote="DarkKestral" data-source="post: 4163158" data-attributes="member: 40100">Not prize money, necessarily. Just large quantities of money in general. The NCAA is a body which doesn't give out anything in the way of prize money to winning teams, but you can be sure they've got a body of certified refs who they consider capable of judging games fairly and pay them to do so. However, the entities comprising the NCAA pay huge sums of money supporting their teams. Salaries for a head coach can be several million dollars a year, plus another few million for his staff, including doctors and trainers. There is also millions that go into construction and maintenance of a stadium and the staffing needed to operate the stadium on gameday. Then you have travel costs...So these teams have a significant outlay that they need to justify to their owners, the universities they represent, and the only way to do that is to have attendance numbers and donations that make the teams either capable of being reasonably self-supporting or even profitable for the universities, else the universities will be forced to shut them down as they would detract too significantly from what they judge to be their central mission.If there are too many scandals about judging, fans will not come, because people like to see what they feel are balanced contests, and judging which seems to favor one side too heavily will distort fans feelings about that and slowly sap the fanbase of members. So they have economic incentives that strongly favor creating a group of judges which make decisions fairly and accurately, and who keep up with the frequent and often esoteric rules changes meant to try and keep play fair, safe, and enjoyable. This is something most people can't do; these judges must consult precedent when in difficult situations and memorize very jargon-filled rulebooks several hundred to even a few thousand pages long, and distill the result down to make their decisions, which is a task somewhat similar to being a judge and jury combined. The difficulty combined with the need ensures that leagues are willing to pay people to be officials and will do so from the league's coffers rather than those of the individual teams, to better protect the officials from prejudice or accusations of impropriety. In smaller leagues, like say kiddie amateur sports leagues, the need is less and we see part time, unpaid refs who may or may not know all of the rules, but who are generally expected to know more about the rules than everyone else.</blockquote>

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