Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, March 15, 1990 TAG: 9003152174
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: C1 EDITION: STATE
SOURCE: DOUG DOUGHTY SPORTSWRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
That goes for a referee as much as it does for any coach or player.
In his 30th and final season as a basketball official, Paul Housman has fulfilled his desire to "go out on top" by calling the ACC championship game and receiving an invitation to the East Regional in Hartford, Conn.
"I'm geared to do the very best I can," said Housman, who is from Roanoke. "They'll get my ultimate effort for as long as I stay in the tournament. But I'm glad I've finally said this is my last season."
There are officials who have hung around longer, but, at 54, Housman no longer looks forward to the grind.
Housman estimates he has officiated between 1,500 and 1,800 games at all levels since 1960. After wrapping up a distinguished playing career at Roanoke College, Housman spent six months in military service before donning a whistle for the first time.
"When I started, you'd get $2.50 for a JV game and $7.50 for the varsity," said Housman, a product of Jefferson High School. "You'd work two games for $10.
"Even though the bucks are pretty good now, I tell the guys, especially the young guys, `Don't go out and buy a new home or a new car based on your officiating income, because you may be here today and gone tomorrow.' "
Officials in top conferences such as the ACC make as much as $450 per game, not including a $100 per diem and coach air travel for any distance greater than 150 miles. For shorter distances, they receive 45 cents per mile, but the travel can become unbearable.
"If you could drop me in the arena, let me do my thing and then drop me back home, I'd be fine," said Housman, who has been a college official since the mid-1960s and has been affiliated with the ACC since 1971.
"It's just not fun anymore. The travel's gotten me. I'm just not enjoying it as much as I once did. It's like I'm burned out. I remember saying a couple of years ago, `If I can just make it to the first ACC Tournament in Charlotte [since 1970], I think I'll hang it up.'
"Plus, I'm still on top somewhat. I might as well not wait until I go downhill, right?"
Housman not only reached Charlotte, but he was selected to work the championship game for the fourth time since 1982. This is the ninth straight year he has been selected for the NCAA Tournament.
Housman has called an NCAA final, between North Carolina State and Houston in 1983; an NCAA semifinal, between Oklahoma and Arizona in 1988, and regional finals in three other years.
"He is a quality man who has carried himself professionally," said Fred Barakat, ACC supervisor of officials. "He doesn't do loud things and makes no attempt to take over a game or bring attention to himself, which is an admirable characteristic in an official.
"I can say only the nicest things about him. He is going out on top. He made the call."
Housman has had some disappointments, particularly when he officiated the U.S. Olympic Trials on four occasions but was not invited to the Olympics. Twice he has been sidelined by illness or injury, once with an ulcer and the other time with a staph infection resulting from knee surgery.
One of Housman's more memorable games was the Midwest Regional final in 1987 between eventual NCAA champion Indiana and LSU. The Hoosiers beat LSU 77-76 despite a technical foul on coach Bobby Knight, who slammed the scorer's table and knocked a telephone off its hook in front of NCAA Selection Committee member Gene Corrigan.
"In our estimation and from what everybody said, we were going to move on," said Housman, who was part of a crew with Tom Fraim and Jim Burr. "We were going to move on as a crew and we were sent home as a crew. The sad part is, we had a hell of a game.
"It's amazing that everybody thinks I have a problem with Bobby Knight. I don't. I saw Bobby Knight a little while after that and he said, `I don't know how the committee could have sent you home, because you deserved to go [to the Final Four].' "
The decision to promote officials to the next round is made not by officiating supervisors, but by members of the selection committee.
"I didn't see the phone bang on the table," Housman said, "but I honestly believe, if [Knight] had gotten another technical, that he would have taken his team to the locker room. In my estimation, it was a no-win situation.
"In his own way, he told me, `I can't believe the committee penalized you guys for my actions.' I saw him later at the Five-Star Camp in Pittsburgh and he said, `If I can be of any help with the Olympics, let me know.' "
Anybody who knows Housman knows that he isn't one to be intimidated by a coach, especially at this stage in his career.
"When I first came up, I made my mark by not taking anything off anybody," Housman said. "Sometimes now, I'm so into the game that I could care less what you're doing [as a coach]. But once you've got my attention, man, you've got it."
Housman remembers a game many years ago in which he called four technical fouls, one each against then-Wake Forest coach Carl Tacy, Wake assistant Bobby Watson, N.C. State head coach Norm Sloan and State guard Monte Towe.
"I might have averaged about 10 or 15 technicals a season," said Housman, who does not keep track of such things. "Now, I probably don't call more than two or three. I don't sense the animosity from the coaches.
"They'll test a young guy every night, see if they don't get a call out of him. If the guy doesn't say, `That's enough,' and then, the next time the guy does it, give him a `T,' then he'll never get any respect."
It helps that Housman is well-groomed, with nary a hair out of place, and rarely changes expression. He rarely smiles, but neither does he adopt the surly air that is so contemptible in some of his colleagues.
"I have had the capacity to block everything out," Housman said. "And the louder the place is, I'm more in tuned with the game. With a small crowd, I've had to tell the coach, `Don't embarrass me because I hear everything. If you say anything, you'd better mean it, too.' "
After the 1988 season, many of the top ACC officials signed contracts with the NBA. Housman, already contemplating retirement, stayed in college, but not necessarily because of his plans.
"I've been asked to go before," Housman said. "It's not my bag. I just don't like the pro game. My demeanor is not geared to all that stuff. Of course, you can `T' them up, but who wants to be doing that all the time."
Some of Housman's contemporaries have chosen to become supervisors, including longtime sidekick Dan Wooldridge from Roanoke, but Housman wants to make a clean break. Wooldridge is supervisor of officials for the Colonial Athletic Association and commissioner of the Old Dominion Athletic Conference.
"Most of the guys want to stay involved," Housman said. "I don't care to be a supervisor or observer. I never was a good spectator. When I do watch a game, it's only to see who's refereeing."
Housman is an avid golfer with a single-digit handicap, but he is not retiring to the mountains or the beach. He has been in the insurance business since his junior year at Roanoke College and, since the retirement of partner Harry Harris in the late 1970s, has been head of Paul J. Housman Associates Inc.
"I have had many people tell me, `You must have gotten $1 million in free publicity,' " Housman said, "because we're in a sports-minded area and a lot of people can say, `There goes my insurance man running up and down the court.' "
Housman eventually hopes to turn over the insurance business to his daughter, Donna, and son-in-law, Jim Spencer, and devote all his energy to a new venture. Housman and five other investors have the North American contract for Paragon Holdings Ltd., a West German firm that markets a fluid-replacement drink, Ice 292, used by many college athletic programs.
"If I can ease myself out of the insurance business and into this other company, I'm going to do it," Housman said. "I've got a big involvement in this other thing."
Housman won't miss the travel and he won't miss his preseason conditioning sessions at Patrick Henry High School.
"I'm definitely happy I won't have to do that anymore," he said. "It's a pain. What I do is run the straights and walk the curves [on the school's track]; basketball is a wind sprint, not a mile run. Then, I throw up a little and do some sit-ups."
In his prime, Housman called 70 games a year. He intentionally reduced his schedule to 38 games this year in the ACC, Metro and Sun Belt conferences. He worked the Sun Belt final one week before the ACC Tournament.
"One thing I would change is, any time I had a chance to fly, I would fly," said Housman, who cited the support of his wife, Katherine, and daughters, Vicki, Marianne and Donna. "It wears you down. It's probably taken seven to 10 years away from my family. For four or five months, I've gone somewhere every weekend for the last 30 years."
It has not gone unnoticed that Housman's retirement coincides with the final season of Terry Holland, whose arrival as Virginia coach in 1974 came at about the time Housman became a full-fledged ACC official.
"I told Terry in November, `Well, we're both lame ducks,' " Housman said. "He said, `We'll last as long as we can.' As I told him Sunday [before the ACC final], `It looks like we both made it to the big dance.' "
by CNB