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Ducks coach Mark Hefrich makes a point during a Pac-12 game.

(Thomas Boyd/Oregonian)

Summers as a teenager I worked a part-time job as a Little League baseball umpire. It was thankless, and the umpires supervisor, an old guy named Bill, always had a cigarette hanging out of his mouth. I made $12 a game.

Naturally, this brings us to the Pac-12 Conference football officials. Turns out it's also a thankless part-time job. The coordinator is a man named Tony Corrente, an NFL official who called Super Bowl XLI. The Pac-12 officials make between $2,700 and $2,900 per game, inclusive of their travel expenses.

I know. I know. The Pac-12 officials stink. It's become the thing to say around the conference. But after talking with officials for this column, and learning more about Corrente, who beat throat cancer and served as a high school Social Science teacher until a couple of years ago, and hearing more about the conference's commitment to getting the calls right, I'm not so sure we're being as fair as we're asking the officials to be.

I know I haven't been.

The conference officials are well aware they've blown some calls this season. They were publicly reprimanded by commissioner Larry Scott for the gaffes at the end of the Arizona State-Wisconsin game. The officials hear the boos at the stadium. They receive the threats, and angry emails from the fans who are so angry they've taken the time to track them down at their homes and regular jobs.

"Perfection is not an attainable standard," Scott said. "There will always be issues. You can't get offended or bristle at it ... but you've got a problem if you don't think you can improve."

The conference believes it has improved dramatically since Corrente stopped teaching and took over the coordination of officiating two years ago. There's a command center at the Pac-12 headquarters where Scott and Corrente sit down every Monday and review every controversial call from the weekend. Each of the game officials receives a grade for his performance. There's a feedback system to relay that to the officials, and there's accountability.

Said Scott: "The officials who receive the better grades week to week will get more assignments and be on the field for the Pac-12 Championship game and bowl games."

The conference invested, too, in summer training for the officials and in technology that helps them study the officiating performance. After hearing about all the officials go through, and the scrutiny the conference breeds, I'm not sure we can do anything more than believe the Pac 12 is doing the best it possibly can.

Scott said he was proud that a Pac-12 crew was selected to work the national championship game last season. And that conference commissioners from around the country spend a portion of the job fielding feedback from frustrated fans every Monday.

"I know fans get upset when they see a call that's wrong or one that they disagree with," he said. "I get upset. But what I focus on is accountability, grading and improvement."

Nick Aliotti, the Ducks defensive coordinator, was asked this week how Washington State should attack Oregon. He told The Oregonian, "If I were them, I would throw some deep balls and hope to get a P.I. (pass interference penalty), because officials always call P.I. Because they are horrible, they don't know how to call a game.

"They don't understand it."

They -- is Jack Folliard and friends.

He's a Pac-12 official, who happens to live in Portland, where he's practiced law since the early 1970s. He's so gifted as an official he was charged with working the 2007 BCS Championship Game. Not to single Folliard out, because I'm sure Aliotti is more specifically talking about the various Pac-12 officials who have flagged the Ducks seven times this season for pass interference, but Folliard gives us a real chance to humanize the officials.

He's a person, like you. He has a family, like you. He'll be graded by the job he does on the field. Folliard will make -- or lose -- income based on his performance on Saturdays, which will be judged not by a half-tanked guy wearing a jersey in Section 42, but by his bosses, watching on slow-motion video.

So boo them if you'd like. Criticize them. Call them idiots. Demand they're fired. But know this isn't a summer sports league run by some guy with a Marlboro dangling from his lip.

If the Pac-12 officials were allowed to talk, they'd probably tell you, "Hey, we miss some calls. We're doing our best out there." I don't expect they're too worried, except when some sad sack sends them a threatening letter.

As if they're not more worried about feeding their families.

---@JohnCanzanoBFT

