THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, February 25, 1996 TAG: 9602250269
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: C1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY STEVE CARLSON, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Long : 369 lines
The North Carolina-Clemson basketball game is over, but referee Larry Rose's work is not.
As Rose runs off the court, he sees Clemson coach Rick Barnes and UNC's Dean Smith jawing in front of the Tar Heels' bench. Rose rushes over and pushes his way between them, then hurries off with one at each shoulder.
In the crowded tunnel - out of view of the ESPN cameras and 11,300 fans - Barnes tries to get around Rose while hollering at Smith: ``You'd better not talk to my players again!'' Rose grabs Barnes and pushes him away, and security people step in.
``It's crazy,'' Rose snorts in the officials' locker room. ``What a dogfight. I had to referee two games tonight.''
Rose, a resident of Courtland in Southampton County, has refereed college basketball for 20 seasons. He's regarded as one of the nation's best officials and worked the 1993 Final Four. In 1994, he became the first black man to call an ACC tournament final, and is one of only five ACC crew chiefs. He works in eight different conferences. Twice, he spurned overtures from the NBA.
One thing Rose had not done until recently was spend 11 consecutive days on the road officiating. Airplanes by day, ballgames by night. From Feb. 6-16, Rose called nine games in eight states. He battled the blizzards of the East, basked in the 80-degree temperatures of the Arizona desert and almost became a boxing referee at Clemson.
And for 72 hours, he let us come along for this whistle-stop tour.
TUESDAY, FEB. 13
CHARLOTTE - At 11:05 a.m., Rose steps off a plane. It's maybe 11:06 before he utters the words that let you know where his heart is: ``I haven't seen my wife and kids for seven days.''
He is wearing a full-length black leather coat and matching brimmed leather hat. He totes a day-timer stuffed with airline tickets and pulls a carry-on suitcase similar to a flight attendant's.
He woke up in Mobile, Ala., after working a game there Monday night. Rose flew to Atlanta, then to Charlotte and has one more plane to Roanoke. From there, it's a 45-minute drive to Virginia Tech in Blacksburg.
That's five cities in four states in less than 12 hours, if you're keeping score. By the time he gets home Friday, in 11 days Rose will have been on 20 flights totaling 8,787 miles.
``This is the wackiest stretch I've ever gone through,'' says Rose, who is working more games than usual because veteran Lenny Wirtz retired right before the season and then Duke Edsall suffered a season-ending knee injury. Rose got a good chunk of the roughly 70 games those two would have worked.
Fred Barakat, the coordinator of officials in the ACC, Colonial Athletic Association and Big South, says he would not allow most officials to keep the schedule Rose does. But Rose, 46, retired from his job as supervisor of international sales at Union Camp paper mill almost two years ago to officiate full-time.
By the time he takes off his striped shirt for the last time this season, Rose will have worked about 90 college basketball games in five months and earned in excess of $60,000.
He's in demand because he's good.
Barakat says Rose is decisive, confident, a great game manager, motivates his crew, exercises good judgment, is consistent and handles players and coaches well. In short, he's a leader.
``He's one of the most recognized and highly respected officials in the country,'' Barakat says.
Respect, of course, comes from precious few quarters for a basketball ref.
``Quite honestly, I coached for 21 years and never thought of an official as a person,'' Barakat says.
Rose equates officiating to police work.
``It's like some people think of policemen; they're not human,'' he says. ``They don't have a life without a gun at their side - but they do. And we have a life without a whistle around our neck.
``On the court we're like police, with our guns around our necks; the whistle officers.''
In Charlotte, Rose grabs his garment bag and checks it through to Roanoke. For Rose, a born-again Christian who is engaging and friendly, life seems to be a steady string of one more plane to catch, one more game to call.
ROANOKE - The plane lands with a thud at 1:08 p.m. Rose is startled awake.
At the baggage claim area, he is greeted by Edsall, who limps noticeably from the surgery required to repair a torn patella tendon. Edsall manages a Busch Grand National team and lives in Roanoke. He will put Rose - the godfather of his daughter - up for the night.
Waiting in the car outside is Edsall's wife and official Bryan Kersey, one of Rose's colleagues for tonight's Liberty-Virginia Tech game. Kersey, 33, has an insurance business in Newport News and is the son of veteran NBA referee Jess Kersey. He's also a cut-up.
``They're doing a story for `America's Most Wanted,' '' Kersey tells a waitress as the group sits down for lunch, explaining the reporter and photographer trailing Rose.
Talk at lunch centers on officiating and stories of the road. Rose delights in telling about Kersey's first ACC assignment this season. Kersey was delayed by a snowstorm, and finally arrived at the hotel in Tallahassee, Fla., at 3 a.m. for a game the next afternoon. Rose greeted him with a favorite old saw of veteran officials: ``So, you wanna be a big-time referee, huh?''
They talk about the drawbacks of working on television, which overexposes officials. It can be a problem when a coach sees a ref on TV working a game 1,000 miles away, and knows that ref is calling his game the next night and may be road-weary. Edsall talks about the advantages of a ``night off,'' meaning a game that is off television, not a night without a game.
``That television kills you,'' Rose says.
Rose tells his colleagues that he and Barakat already have discussed the potentially volatile situation the next night at Clemson, where Smith and Barnes began their feud a year ago.
Rose rolls his eyes and shakes his head.
BLACKSBURG - Rose cat-naps much of the 45-minute drive from Roanoke down I-81. At 5:20, he and Kersey pull into Tech's Cassell Coliseum.
``Probably I'll be up until 2 or 3 o'clock in the morning,'' Rose says. ``I can't sleep after games.''
The third member of the crew, Frankie Bordeaux, is waiting in the rather spartan locker room, where the pipes rattle and clank incessantly. There's plenty of time to kill before the 7 p.m. tipoff.
The officials dress and stretch out at a leisurely pace. Rose puts on the familiar striped shirt and a couple minutes later there's a welcome knock at the door.
The checks are here.
Rose's is for $912. He receives $475 for working the game, plus a per diem and travel expenses arrived at with a formula based on how far the game is from his house. Because he is staying at Edsall's, Rose will pocket a good portion of the travel expenses. The next night at Clemson he will receive $1,220 - a $550 fee plus per diem and travel. When Rose works in the CAA, he makes $450 plus travel expenses.
At 6:12, a suddenly business-like Rose says, ``All right, let's get it going,'' as he pulls out a small magnetic board of a basketball floor. He pushes three yellow magnets, representing the officials, around the court.
Rose talks about positioning and angles and who is responsible for calling certain areas. Officials have three positions from which they look for specific infractions: ``lead'' is along the baseline and handles most calls in the lane; ``center'' is along the sideline even with the free-throw line and watches for fouls on the perimeter and in the middle; ``trail'' is on the opposite sideline closer to midcourt, and as the last man down the court has time-line responsibility and watches basically the same as ``center'' but from the other side. They constantly rotate between the three positions.
Rose also goes over both teams' personnel and coaches. Liberty isn't given much of a chance against the 10th-ranked Hokies, but Rose points out the Flames will have nothing to lose.
``The last thing we want to have happen in a game like this is for somebody to get hurt and they go back and look at the film and say, `Those officials took a night off,' '' Rose says. ``This would be an easy game to take a night off.''
Turns out it's just an easy game to call. Snafus for the officials are minimal.
Rose throws the ball up for the opening tip and gets hit in the elbow by Tech's Ace Custis, turning Rose's arm and hand numb most of the first half. Bordeaux makes a questionable goal-tending call. Kersey misses a call on an elbow thrown by a Hokie, which will prompt Barakat to call Rose tomorrow saying the film showed a Liberty player got popped.
Relatively minor stuff, and neither coaches nor players dispute much. The refs have a better night than the Hokies.
``Ace said to me at one point, `Our heads are just not in it, Mr. Rose,' '' Rose says. ``I said, `You better get in it.' ''
Tech - with top-ranked UMass coming in just four days later - struggles before coming from 11 points down in the second half to win by three.
``You can't get no easier game than that,'' Rose says as the officials run off the court at 8:32 and get a police escort to their locker room downstairs.
It will prove to be an interesting contrast to the next night at Clemson.
WEDNESDAY, FEB. 14
CHARLOTTE - Rose is back on a flight from Roanoke to Charlotte at 8:20 a.m. The end of the trip is in sight. ``I'm getting closer and closer to home,'' he says.
This 11-day trip has reinforced his disinterest in the NBA, where he says officials are only home about four days a month. Rose is normally never gone more than three days at a stretch.
In the cab ride to the Fairfield Inn, Rose remembers it's Valentine's Day.
Tweeet! Personal foul.
He goes up to his room at 9:40 a.m. and calls a couple of florists in Franklin. Sorry, sold out, he is told. He calls Yvonne, his wife of 29 years, who doesn't T him up, letting him off the hook with the promise of dinner Friday.
``My wife is one of the greatest assets I have in officiating,'' says Rose, who was married at 16 and was a father of two at 18. ``Without a good wife, you can't do this.''
For the next few hours, Rose has nothing to do but eat lunch and rest. While he kicks back in his hotel room, he discusses life behind the stripes.
Former Hampton basketball coach Ike Moorehead started Rose working intramurals when Rose was a Hampton football and baseball player. Soon Rose was calling high school and rec league basketball games in and around Franklin. Moorehead told CIAA supervisor of officials Danny Doss he should take a look at a kid in Franklin.
Doss, who is retired and lives in Chesapeake, liked what he saw, but had to court Rose heavily.
``He was happy where he was and had no aspirations to go further,'' Doss says. ``He didn't realize the potential, both his own and to his pocketbook. Finally I went to Franklin to talk to him one last time and said, `I'm not going to bother you any more, but I think you're making a big mistake. Why don't you give it a shot?' ''
Rose relented. Doss proved to be a good judge of talent. Rose has officiated college games since 1976 and is in his 13th ACC season.
The CIAA was his training ground, but Rose has had a falling out with the league. He worked 11 consecutive CIAA finals and became supervisor of CIAA officials in 1992, but was dismissed two years later by commissioner Leon Kerry.
``We didn't agree on what it takes to be a good supervisor of officials,'' Rose says. ``It soured me to the CIAA. It hurt me to sever my ties with the conference that birthed me because of him.''
Rose says that in five or six years, he would like to retire from officiating and serve again somewhere as a conference coordinator of officials.
Other than the travel, he has few complaints about officiating as a full-time job. He works from November to late March or early April and does a couple of camps in the summer, but otherwise is free during the offseason to play golf and spend time with his family.
Rose touches on other topics while awaiting the drive to Clemson. Here's Rose, calling them as he sees 'em:
On the toughest place to officiate in the ACC: Duke, because the vocal, wise-cracking students are down around the court.
On what he likes most about officiating: ``The competitiveness. I'm an ex-college athlete. Officials are over-the-hill athletes who want to stay in athletics.''
On what he dislikes most about it: ``When I see a mother or father up there in the stands with a 5- or 6-year-old kid and they're using profanity toward an official. What do they think that kid's going to grow up like? Some of the vulgarities that come out of these people's mouths, it's embarrassing.''
On the most offensive thing he's heard from fans: ``Some of the racial slurs are things that have bothered me. Some of these people are still living in the 1940s, I guess. Some of those Southern schools you go to, you hear the `N' word. That bothers me, but you have to let it roll off your back and realize the people saying it are ignorant.''
On dealing with often-belligerent coaches: ``They have a little paranoia and they're under a lot of pressure. We realize that. You've got to put all these things in the pot. Your main focus is on the kids and trying to be fair to them. Those coaches that don't have a sense of humor are the most difficult to deal with.''
On staying in shape in the offseason: Rose, who admits he's 10 pounds heavier than he'd like to be this season, works out at the YMCA. He runs three to four miles every game he calls, but does not run to stay in shape. ``You need to save your legs. It takes the offseason for the legs to heal.''
CLEMSON, S.C. - It's a two-hour drive down I-85 from Charlotte to Clemson. Rose sleeps on the way to the ACC's most-difficult outpost to reach.
``You miss the exit, you fall off the edge of the earth,'' official Tim Higgins says.
Higgins, 49, works for a building material supply business and lives in Ramsey, N.J. The man behind the wheel of the Lincoln Town Car is official Stan Rote, 57, a retired high school guidance counselor from Abingdon, Md.
It's no accident that this is a veteran crew. The head coaches have clashed twice before, including a nose-to-nose confrontation at the 1995 ACC tournament.
The officials arrive at Littlejohn Coliseum at 4:45 p.m. for the 7 p.m. game. As they dress in the women's locker room, Rose rifles through the four sets of referee uniforms he has packed for this extended trip. ``It looks like a sporting goods store,'' Higgins cracks.
Rose pulls on the stripes and at 6:08 p.m. he begins the pregame talk.
``This is the game that started it all last year between these two guys,'' Rose says. ``I expect them to be on their best behavior tonight. I don't think we'll have any trouble.''
Rose keeps the pregame short - members of this crew have seen it all before. Two members of the ESPN crew come in to discuss timeouts and other game logistics. The stocky Higgins poses in front of the mirror, flexing and joking about his weight-lifting prowess.
``Two more games and I can go home,'' Rose says, ``and I'm already dressed for one.''
They head to the court for pregame warmups. At the Clemson scorer's table is a familiar face. Larry Nash says he's missed two home games in 29 years of keeping the book.
``I would put Rose in my top three or four officials,'' Nash says. ``I like the way he officiates, and I like the person. He seems to always be happy and enjoys working.''
When the teams leave the court for final instructions, the officials do as well. Barakat is here to observe, and comes into the refs' locker room.
``You understand what's going on out here tonight, right?'' Barakat says. ``We've gotta make sure we control ourselves first to control what's going on.''
As the officials head back to the court, Barakat gives them a final word of encouragement: ``Let's be the best team on the court tonight.''
The atmosphere in the arena is charged. Barnes looks wired even before the opening tip.
Along each baseline, students stand on risers close enough to the court that the kids could reach out and touch the official working under the basket. At the first TV timeout, a student wearing a basketball net around his neck, three tiger paws painted on his face and a Clemson flag stuffed in his shorts comes onto the court and offers Rose a drink from a plastic bottle.
Uh, no thanks.
Near the end of the half, Barnes pops up and vehemently protests a reach-in call: ``He got all ball!''
``You'd better watch it,'' Rose shoots back with a glare.
The intensity ratchets up several notches in the second half, and the game is tight throughout. Between consultations with each other on certain calls and with the coaches, the refs are holding enough sidebars to make Judge Ito weary.
With just over eight minutes to go, an old wound reopens. Smith says something to Clemson's Bill Harder, who the coach claims is holding Dante Calabria's jersey.
Barnes calls a 20-second timeout to complain to the officials about Smith haranguing his players.
``Rick, I've gotta see it,'' Higgins replies.
Barnes asks for a conference at the scorer's table with Smith and the officials. Request denied.
The Tar Heels pull away and win by five, but Smith can't pull away from his bench quickly enough to escape Barnes. Rose separates them and leads them into the tunnel.
``He was aware, and he was looking,'' Barakat says, applauding Rose's quick action. ``That's why he got right in there.''
Smith tells the media the incident was nothing. ``Rick said, `I want to talk to you,' so I said, `Call me,' '' Smith says.
Barnes says he has no intention of calling Smith because it should be dealt with face-to-face.
They'll both have opportunities to talk about it, as commissioner Gene Corrigan eventually will get involved.
Larry Rose only wishes he wasn't.
THURSDAY, FEB. 15
CHARLOTTE - Yet another short night. After returning to the hotel at 11:45 p.m., Rose was up until about 2 a.m. again.
At 8:30, he and Higgins are in the hotel lobby eating a continental breakfast when a guy at the next table overhears them talking about games and travel. He asks what business they're in.
``I'm in the building supply business,'' Higgins says curtly.
``I'm in the seafood business,'' Rose says.
In other words, none of your business.
``He was about to say something else,'' Rose says later, explaining the brush off. ``We tell him we're basketball refs, that opens up a Pandora's box. We're basically secretive people.''
At the airport, Rose no sooner checks his bags than he hears Barakat paged over the intercom. He figures that's Corrigan calling for an explanation about last night's incident.
``I hope it doesn't get so far that he has to call and ask me questions,'' Rose says. ``We try to be as inconspicuous as possible. We don't want to be involved in something like this. It's nasty.''
NORFOLK - The sign in flashing lights inside the terminal reads Welcome to Norfolk.
``It's good to see that,'' Rose says.
He won't have long to enjoy it. The plane from Charlotte lands at 11:20 a.m., and by 12:10 p.m. he'll be bound for Newark to work tonight's St. John's-Rutgers game, the last in his 11-day swing. It's been a long stretch for both Rose and his wife
``I hope this doesn't happen again,'' Yvonne Rose says later. ``We've never been separated so long in the 29 years we've been together.''
Rose relaxes in the Norfolk airport, talking about last night's game and the incident with the coaches.
``It didn't escalate into anything horrible,'' Rose says. ``Officials are used to confrontations.''
With that, he gets up and heads to the gate.
One more plane.
One more game. ILLUSTRATION: COLOR PHOTOS BY ERIC BRADY/Landmark News Service
By the time Larry Rose puts on his striped shirt for the last time
this season, he will have worked about 90 college basketball games
in the last five months.
Fellow official Randy Dunton, left, of Rocky Mount, N.C., and Larry
Rose share a laugh before tipoff at a recent game.
ERIC BRADY PHOTOS/Landmark News Service
Graphics
LARRY ROSE FILE
JOHN CORBITT/The Virginian-Pilot
11 DAYS IN THE LIFE OF A REFEREE
[For complete graphics, please see microfilm]
KEYWORDS: PROFILE BIOGRAPHY REFEREE by CNB