The NCAA earned praise last year for agreeing to pay referees equally at men’s and women’s basketball tournaments.This gesture only costs around $100,000. That’s a fraction of the roughly $900 million the network pays each year to air March Madness.
The NCAA is currently investigating various disparities in sports between men and women., increasing pressure to pay referees equally during the regular season. The Division I man told his Associated Press that two conferences were planning to equalize pay, and one he’s already considering, with negligible impact on budgets. Even so, some companies are resisting change.
“People doing[pay equality]are reading what’s on the wall,” says Michael Lewis, a marketing professor at Emory University’s Goizueta Business School.
While NCAA referee compensation details are closely guarded, AP has obtained data for the 2021-22 season. This shows that the NCAA’s 15 largest and most profitable conferences paid veteran men’s basketball referees an average of 22% more per game he played. .
This level of pay gap is wider than the gender pay gap across the U.S. economy, with women earning 82 cents for every dollar men earn, according to the 2020 Census. And it is an overwhelming disadvantage for women, who make up less than 1% of referees in charge of men’s matches.
Dawn Staley, head coach at the women’s national champion University of South Carolina Gamecocks, said men’s referees should “step up” and advocate equal pay for women’s referees. “They aren’t doing anything different,” she said. “Why do our officials have to take a pay cut for using the (expletive) language we gave them?”
Those who provided the AP with data for nearly half of the NCAA’s 32 Division I meetings did so on condition of anonymity because they had first-hand knowledge of the payroll and the information is considered private.
The Northeast Conference has the widest pay gap per game of any NCAA league analyzed by the AP, with the most experienced referees in the men’s game earning over 48%. The Atlantic 10 paid their veteran male referees 44% more than he did, and the Colonial Athletic Association paid them 38% more than he did. (In AP research data, only the Ivy League paid veteran executives equally.)
Of the unequal compensation conferences contacted by the AP, two – the Pac-12 and the Northeast Conference – said they plan to level the playing field starting next season. The league is reviewing fairness for officials in all sports after a 33% pay gap last year.
Pac-12 paid its umpires equally a decade ago, but allowed the gap to widen over time, said associate commissioner Teresa Gould. She said returning to equal pay was “the right thing to do.”
NEC commissioner Noreen Morris said the decision to equalize pay was an easy one to make once he realized basketball was the only sport that didn’t pay referees equally. .
The cost of closing the wage gap may seem small compared to the amount of money these leagues generate.
For example, the SEC paid referees for men’s games 10%, or $350. It’s part of his $3 billion deal with ESPN to broadcast all sports from 2024.
Division I’s most experienced referees are well paid in men’s or women’s matches. During a season he earns over $150,000 and some dozens of games in multiple conferences. New referees earn much less, supplementing income from another job.
All NCAA referees are independent contractors, there is no union representing their interests, and everyone must cover their own travel expenses.
The busiest referees work five to six games a week in different cities, run up and down the court for 40 minutes one night, sleep for a few hours, wake up at 4am to catch a flight to their next destination. increase.
Dee Kantner, a veteran female referee who has worked at multiple conferences, is frustrated at having to justify equal pay.
“If I buy a ticket and tell them I’m playing a women’s basketball game, they won’t charge me more,” she said.
“You don’t appreciate women’s basketball that much, do you?” Kantner said. “How are you rationalizing this?”
Some of the conference’s commissioners have said that men’s and women’s matches do not generate the same amount of money and the level of play is not the same, so referee salaries are set accordingly.
“Historically, we have treated each referee pool as a separate market,” said Big East commissioner Val Ackerman. I think the league has the right to consider different factors here.I don’t see this as a stock issue — I see it as a market issue.”
The Big East pays referees who work in men’s games 22% more, and Ackermann said there were no immediate plans to make any changes.
Atlantic 10 Commissioner Bernadette McGlade said the market-based approach has allowed them to offer the best price per game across the NCAA. “We’re getting the most experienced and most qualified officials in the country,” she said.
Data surveyed by the AP shows that veteran umpires officiating at the Atlantic-10 are paid $3,300 in men’s games and $2,300 in women’s games. Last year, game-specific participation rates were high, indicating a narrow gender gap.
Of the approximately 800 umpires who officiated women’s basketball last season, 43% were women, a percentage that has remained relatively consistent over the past decade. But she was only six women to referee men’s games last year. This number has been slowly increasing over the last few years.
Penny Davis, superintendent of NCAA officials, said the conference is trying to recruit more women to officiate the men’s games.
But Davis says she doesn’t want any more women refereeing women’s basketball. “We do our best and don’t want to lose the brightest,” she said.
Ten years ago, referees working in the men’s and women’s NCAA tournaments were paid equally. However, as the profitability of the men’s tournament skyrocketed, so did the budget, which led to higher payouts to referees.
McGlade and Ackerman applauded the NCAA for bringing back equal pay for the March tournament. “We are mindful of what the NCAA has done for the tournament,” Ackerman said. “The NCAA Tournament games are close, but not a completely typical refereeing experience.”
Ivy League executive director Robin Harris disagrees. “We decided a while ago that it was right to pay them the same amount. They do the same work.”
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AP College Football Writer Ralph D. Russo contributed to this article.
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Other AP Women’s Basketball: https://apnews.com/hub/womens-basketball and https://twitter.com/AP_Sports
