Something we touched on briefly in discussing the explanation for the 130 phone calls between NBA referees Tim Donaghy and Scott Foster was the boredom of life on the road. In the independent report on the NBA's referee program, Lawrence Pedowitz goes into a fair bit of detail about the lonely nature of the job.
[M]uch of a referee's life involves travel, and travel involves a great deal of waiting time, so Foster often makes calls to "kill time." Foster is a creature of habit and a basketball and sports junkie. When he is on the road, he works out every morning at 10:00 a.m. He is also an early riser, which means that he has several hours to kill every morning. [...]
Referees have more time on their hands in the afternoon before a night game. Foster described this time as often boring and lonely, because referees rarely spend it together. Therefore, Foster usually returns to his hotel room after lunch and makes more calls to fellow referees. [...] The excitement of officiating an NBA game in the evening typically leaves him "wired" and unable to sleep right away when he gets back to his hotel room after the game, often after midnight. Because it is often too late at night to call his family, Foster calls his fellow referees to discuss the games they have just officiated.
Scott Foster needs a hobby he can take on the road. Online poker? Erm ... maybe not. The league should include some fix for this problem in its restructuring of the referee program. Why not hire a little buddy to hang out with and entertain each ref? Or give the refs supplemental jobs, like transcribing Gilbert Arenas' blog posts. Keep these guys busy. We all know an idle mind is the devil's playground.
