The Big 12 conference presents an exciting and rhythmic university football with teams participating in the national championship almost every season. The conference needs good officials – especially good referees.
Greg Burks, officials’ supervisor, had a big challenge this offseason. He had to replace four referees.
Cooper Castleberry (19), Mike Defee (14) and Eddy Shelton (nine) have all retired.
Replacing 42 years of referee experience is difficult enough, but the Big 12 have lost one more referee, but not retired.
Reggie Smith, a Pennsylvania resident, left Big 12 to become a Big Ten umpire, replacing retired Dan Capron. Smith’s move makes sense because he lives in the Big Ten geographic footprint.
This creates an opportunity for established Big 12 referees such as Brandon Cruse, Scott Campbell and David Alvarez to climb the ranks and work on New Years balls and conference championship games.
Congratulations to Defee, Castleberry and Shelton on their retirement and best wishes to Smith while working in the Big Ten.
The new referees
The Big 12 is the main conference of a consortium officiating with the Mountain West and Southland conferences. Two new Big 12 referees are from Mountain West. Burks promoted one to the ranks of the Big 12 and hired one outside of the Pac-12 Conference.
The new Big 12 referees are:
- Tuta Salaam. He was previously a Big 12 side judge. He worked on the 2019 Orange Bowl and the Big 12 championship game. He is also a member of the NFL Officiating Development Program (ODP).
- Michael Vandervelde. He was previously a Mountain West referee who worked at the 2019 Military Bowl.
- Kevin Hassell. He was previously a Mountain West referee who worked at the 2019 Cure Bowl.
- Kevin Mar. He was previously a Pac-12 referee who worked at the 2018 Senior Bowl and was in the ODP in 2017. Mar also spent time in Mountain West and the Big 12 before going to Pac-12 as a white hat.
Congratulations to the four officials who are now the referees for the Big 12.
Now let’s hope there will be a 2020 season for them!
