Top NCAA referee’s time working AAU tourney shows sad state of sports, society
ByPhil Mushnick
May 28, 2022 12:59pm
Updated
Last week we found two examples of all-sports radio presenting at least temporary game plans to best serve sports, rather than to further desensitize young male adults by going low, then lower and using sports as a prop to air Pee-Pee & Poo-Poo Shows.
Both made important sports radio, not much heard around here.
No. 1: College basketball fans are likely familiar with John Higgins. He’s a top-shelf Division I referee assigned to many of the biggest games, including the Final Four. He’s the ref who, with floppy light brown hair, looks like one of the Beach Boys, circa 1968.
NOTE: You know he loved that quote ... being as narcissistic as that azzhole is.
On May 18, Higgins appeared on the show “The Morning Rush” on KXNO in Des Moines, Iowa, interviewed by hosts Travis Justice, Heather Burnside and Sean Roberts. Burnside provided an online synopsis under the headline, “How This NCAA Ref Knows We Are Doomed as a Society.”
After noting Higgins has suffered the abuse of big-ticket coaches and the escalating, highly personal insolence of we-know-where-you-live “fans,” Burnside wrote, “He thought he’d seen it all — before he offered to referee an AAU tournament in Council Bluffs, Iowa, with his 15-year-old son.”
Higgins’ son was supposed to have reffed with a 15-year-old buddy, but, at the last minute his partner couldn’t make it. “So that’s how a highly qualified Final Four ref found himself blowing the whistle at a [high school] freshman AAU game.”
By Higgins’ description to KXNO, the teams were not even “high-level freshman teams, probably mid-level, at best. And I’m being kind.”
“The tournament director,” Burnside continued, “was thrilled just to have some officials, as they are hard to find these days, despite lowering requirements to having a pulse, a whistle, and a tolerance for being berated by irate parents.
“Higgins said the first game went smoothly, and his son was quickly learning that refereeing isn’t ‘just blowing a whistle and running.’ ”
But then …
“Game 2 quickly started to go downhill when, as Higgins described it, one of the teams started playing really physically. A double flagrant foul, and a double technical foul were issued. One player in particular … stood out as not only overly physical, but mouthy.
“Not surprisingly, the kid with an attitude fouled out. Somewhat surprisingly, his team also managed to win the game.”
According to Burnside, Higgins said the coach of that team “used language so foul during a timeout, to his own team, that Higgins wasn’t comfortable repeating what the coach said on the radio.
“Higgins said he probably should have [T’d] the coach up right then, or maybe even stopped the game, but, ‘I wasn’t trying to be the Division I official coming in to a freshman AAU game. I was just trying to fit in.’
“After the game, Attitude Kid walked up to Higgins, ‘put his middle finger up, and tells me, You f**ing suck!’ Higgins ejected him from the rest of the tournament.
“Then the coach came after Higgins. He was also ejected from the tournament. The tournament organizers were fully behind these ejections. They also interviewed the coach to get his take.”
When the coach was asked who the Attitude Kid was, Higgins said his response was, “I coach a lot of kids, I don’t know.”
Turned out, Attitude Kid was the coach’s son.
“The coach had no idea it was NCAA referee John Higgins working his game,” Burnside continued.
In fact, Higgins told KXNO that when he talked to the coach during the game about his own behavior, he “pulled out his cell phone, and took my picture. I said, ‘Fine, take my picture. Tell your guy who’s running this tournament Higgins worked your game.’ ”
Burnside: “Higgins is still surprised that at the end of the day, when he changed his shoes and put down his whistle, this was his
experience working — basically volunteering — an AAU basketball tournament.”
James Worthy (l.)NBAE via Getty ImagesAsked by the radio hosts where this coach’s conduct ranked on his all-time list of ill-tempered, bad-act coaches, Higgins said: “He’s probably close to the top. I mean, I’ve had situations where we’ve ran [Bob] Huggins, [John] Calipari, I mean big time coaches … Bob Knight. This guy, he’s way up there.
“And unfortunately he’s coaching the youth of today. Which is sad. It’s just sad.”
And there’s plenty more to come.
No. 2: James Worthy, the former North Carolina and Lakers’ star, is now 61. Last week, on the “Stoney & Jansen” show over Detroit’s 97.1 FM, Mike Stone and Jon Jansen, asked Worthy about the state of the NBA.
His answer was sagacious, even suggesting a common sense cure for what’s killing the NBA. But the fix is also pure fantasy as is it will never happen, Far too late. The toothpaste is out of the genie.
SEE ALSO
James Worthy rips modern NBA players over fundamentals and maturity
Worthy: “Kareem [Abdul-Jabbar, then Lew Alcindor] had four years with John Wooden. Michael Jordan and I had three years with Dean Smith. Isiah [Thomas] had some years [two] with Bobby Knight.
“So, you learned the fundamentals. Not only that, you learned how to live. You learned how to balance your freaking checkbook in college, there’s a lot of things.
“When you don’t get that, guys are coming to the NBA who are not fundamentally sound. All they do is practice 3s, lift weights, get tattoos, tweet and go on social media. That’s it.
“So you don’t have that sound player, you have an athletic player. And that’s what’s happening to the game. It’s a lot of isolation plays and looking for mismatches. Bill Russell told me one time that they had five options off of one play. You don’t see that anymore.”
Now back to our regularly scheduled programming.
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