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In the GNAC, black refs have blown the whistle on their supervisors.
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Basketball followers are accustomed to referees being the subject of fans' grievances. But they're less accustomed to hearing referees air grievances themselves.
"The fraternity of officials is very quiet, kind of like the Freemasons. That's by design," says Ike Durham, a business relationship manager with Wells Fargo who has been a college basketball referee for more than 20 years. (Generally speaking, only pro refs are afforded the luxury of officiating full time without holding down a day job.)
Nevertheless, Durham and recently retired official Don Tuggle felt the need to speak up. They contend that for a long time, the Great Northwest Athletic Conference, an NCAA Division II league containing Seattle Pacific University and Western Washington University, hasn't given black officials a fair shake. They paint a picture of a good-ol'-boys network in which white friends of current officials are hired and promoted over more qualified black applicants. And if Durham and Tuggle's depiction is accurate, professional whistleblowers don't like metaphorical ones: They say their decision to speak up has brought retaliation.
"You could look at the percentage of refs that [the GNAC] had. We did the math, and it was 5 percent people of color," says Jody DeCuire, vice president of the Seattle/King County NAACP.
After Durham and Tuggle alerted the NAACP to the situation, the organization contacted the GNAC in May 2007. "We looked at their process for hiring, and realized they didn't have any process to ensure they were being objective," says DeCuire. "We told them, 'It's not that you have an overtly discriminatory process, you have no process at all. As a result you end up with a homogeneous environment.'"
Shortly thereafter, GNAC commissioner Richard Hannan flew to Seattle from his office in Spokane to meet with DeCuire, Durham, and Tuggle. As the group began discussions over the next several weeks on how to address concerns, the league's supervisor of officials, Bob Olsen, moved to Florida. (Olsen, who has retired from officiating, says that under his tenure the percentage of refs of color increased, and he never hired on the basis of "friendship, race, color, or creed.") Hannan replaced him with Stu Gorski, a veteran GNAC ref who pledged to be aggressive in ensuring opportunities for refs of color.
"In a normal year, you hire three or four officials," says Gorski, who also sought to make employment decisions more meritocratic and transparent. "I made a point of going out and watching as many officials as I could, and I hired 12. I wanted to make sure that if there were people that believed that there was a good-ol'-boy system, that would be dispelled."
Gorski notes that seven of the 12 new officials are people of color. "I didn't go out there with a quota," he explains. "I just wanted to find the best officials, regardless of race or background, and I think I did."
But Tuggle and Durham note that the league declined to retain several black officials. Vince Elmore, who is black, says that Gorski declined to rehire him because he chose to attend his mother's funeral in South Carolina rather than attend a basketball camp at which his officiating skills could be evaluated.
"What appalled me is that they knew what I was doing. I told them I couldn't make it," says Elmore, who is a lieutenant with the Portland, Ore., Police Department. "Do you really think I would put down my family to go to a basketball camp?"
Gorski denies that Elmore's failure to attend the camp was the reason he wasn't asked back. "That's a pretty cold, heartless individual [who would require camp attendance over a family funeral]," Gorski adds. "I have said...repeatedly, there is no official GNAC camp. There is no mandatory camp—zero."
Yet in a July 30, 2008 e-mail to Elmore, Gorski wrote the following: "Due to the fact that your ratings were very low (due much in part to this last year being your first year in the GNAC), and more importantly, in your inability to attend an instructional camp where I was in attendance (BCC, SPU, TCC, CWU, and WWU), this summer leaves me little choice [but to decline to ask you back]."
While Gorski is reluctant to speak ill of his predecessor, it is apparent that many of the complaints he faces originated in Olsen's tenure. Gorski is adamant about the voluntary attendance policy of the camps in part because of accusations that Olsen required aspiring officials to audition at instructional summer camps from which he profited.
"Bob Olsen picked up on what a lot of the Division I assigners are doing to make a ton of money," says a recently retired Division I official who asked to remain anonymous. "It wasn't illegal, but it wasn't kosher."
"People would pay $500 just to learn they weren't going to get the opportunity to work," says Tuggle.
Olsen denies any profit motive. "People were observed at a variety of camps. There was only one that I operated. There's a popular myth that these are big money-makers. The largest profit I ever turned was less than $1,000 for a three-day camp, with double and triple the number of days on either end for setup and cleanup."
