Last night, Roger Ayers worked the Alabama-North Carolina game, marking the 31st consecutive day he reffed a D-I game. It’s an incredible feat that tied the known record1 set by Ron Groover last year. The word on the street is that Ayers will be taking tonight off. Thus, I feel compelled to memorialize this accomplish and so there’s a record of it for future generations.
This is not a post for the people who wring their hands about how officials are overworked and should be taking more days off. As college officiating gets more nationalized maybe the schedules of the best officials will become more sensible. That’s a different and less interesting discussion.
This is simply a post admiring the travel schedule of a 59-year old person who is on the road for 31 consecutive days with no excuses allowed for not showing up or even being late. And even though he shares the record, Ayers’ journey was quite a bit more challenging than Groover’s, spanning all four time zones, including going coast-to-coast five different times.
Using Google Flights, and a four-point grading system of trip difficulty based on estimated hours of sleep and flight connection times, let’s examine this wild itinerary:
November 5: Chapel Hill to Lubbock.
Difficulty: Medium
Nearby Raleigh-Durham is the 35th-busiest airport in the US, so it has options. He could have taken American at 11:34 AM connecting through Dallas, but that’s just a 45-minute connection so it’s probably too risky. It’s safer to take the 6:28 AM departure on something like 3 hours sleep.
November 6: Lubbock to Charlottesville.
Difficulty: Medium
This is a bit of a challenge. I guess Roger is taking the 6:00 AM connecting back through Dallas arriving in Richmond at 1:58 PM and then driving to Charlottesville. I have come to realize that Roger must sleep well on planes, or not need sleep at all.
November 7: Charlottesville to Chicago.
Difficulty: Easy.
After the difficult start, this begins a much easier stretch. Roger has to make the hour-plus drive to Richmond after the game, but there are a bunch of direct flights to Chicago from there.
November 8: Chicago to Durham.
Difficulty: Easy.
Again, plenty of direct flights from Chicago to RDU. Roger doesn’t even have to get up too early.
November 9: Durham to Richmond.
November 10: Richmond to Greensboro.
November 11: Greensboro to Blacksburg.
Difficulty: Easy.
All of these are leisurely drives.
November 12: Blacksburg to Atlanta.
Difficulty: Easy.
Delta has direct flights out of Roanoke. Roger’s even sleeping in his own home!
November 13: Atlanta to Fairfax.
Difficulty: Easy.
All sorts of direct option from Atlanta to DC. Easy peasy.
November 14: Fairfax to Stillwater.
Difficulty: Medium
Back to the grind. There are two direct flights out of Reagan National to OKC, but both are in the afternoon. Nothing from Dulles. But there are plenty of options with a reasonable connection and not super-early departure. The hour-plus drive in good traffic from Will Rogers to Gallagher-Iba makes this less pleasant.
November 15: Stillwater to Indianapolis.
Difficulty: Medium.
Plenty of options, but the connections aren’t great. We’re probably going through Chicago on United with a tight connection. If something goes wrong Roger can conceivably drive from Chicago.
November 16: Indianapolis to Dayton.
Difficulty: Easy.
A simple two-hour drive as Roger elects to keep the streak alive by officiating Dayton against the D-III Capital Comets. It’s his first time reffing a non-D-I team since December of 2020.
November 17: Dayton to Tempe.
Difficulty: Moderate
This isn’t as bad as you might think. There are flights out of Dayton with reasonable connections, and you gain two hours on the trip.
November 18: Tempe to Washington, DC.
Difficulty: Hard
This is one of the riskier trips. You have a direct from Sky Harbor to Dulles that arrives at 3:45 PM. The drive into DC is about 40 minutes on a good day. Which doesn’t leave a ton of time to make a 7 PM tip. All of this to ref a GW/NJIT game.
November 19: Washington, DC to South Bend.
Difficulty: Easy
If Roger hadn’t embarked on this adventure I wouldn’t have known there’s a direct flight from Dulles to South Bend on something called Breeze Airways (The Seriously Nice™Airline). I can’t rule out that Roger created this company at a massive loss solely to facilitate his own travel.
November 20: South Bend to Stanford.
Difficulty: Easy
This actually is totally fine. You gain three hours and SFO is really close to Stanford. Plenty of comfortable one-stop options from South Bend.
November 21: Stanford to Berkeley.
Difficulty: None!
Hey, some down time for Roger. Check out the Embarcadero for a few hours or go sit in on a Sam Hinkie lecture. All sorts of possibilities.
November 22: Berkeley to Tucson.
Difficulty: Easy
Direct flights from SFO to Tucson. No problem.
November 23: Tucson to Chicago.
Difficulty: Moderate.
Direct flights but the trick is it’s a 4 PM tip at DePaul so we’re taking the 6 AM flight out of Tucson.
November 24: Chicago to Kingston.
Difficulty: Hard
Roger has to make a noon tip at Rhode Island which really complicates this. You can take a direct to Boston that arrives at 10:03 AM, but it’s a 90 minute drive to Kingston from there. So he had to have left in the evening after the DePaul game. Google says it’s a 24-minute drive from Wintrust Arena to O’Hare, so it’s possible to make the 8:20 PM departure on American. Skip the post-game shower and hope there’s no OT, I guess. This one is kind of nuts.
November 25: Kingston to Saint Louis.
Difficulty: Easy
Now he gets the long turnaround from an early afternoon game to an evening game so this is pretty straightforward. Drive to Boston after the Rhode Island game and you’ll have a selection of morning direct flights to Saint Louis. Catch the Boston Pops in the evening for some culture.
November 26: Saint Louis to Las Vegas.
Difficulty: Easy
Southwest has some direct flights. Roger is working the late game at the Players Era event or whatever it was called so he can even sleep in a bit since he won’t need to take the first flight out. Which is good because the Rutgers-Notre Dame game that night ends up being the first and only overtime game he’ll work.
November 27: Las Vegas
November 28: Las Vegas to Palm Springs
November 29: Palm Springs
November 30: Palm Springs to Las Vegas
Difficulty: None to Easy
Roger was fortunate enough to be able to work five nights in a row across Thanksgiving at two different tournaments. It’s about a four hour drive from Vegas to Palm Springs and I’m guessing that’s what he did. The schedule doesn’t work out to catch Carrot Top, unfortunately.
December 1: Las Vegas to San Francisco.
Difficulty: Easy
Roger doesn’t have to work the Mercyhurst vs. San Francisco game. In fact, until last season, he’d never been seen on the West Coast working a non-tournament game. But that’s what he’s doing and there are plenty of convenient flights to make it happen.
December 2: San Franciso to Washington, DC.
Difficulty: Hard
The San Francisco game was a 4 PM tip, so Roger has plenty of time to make the red-eye. It’s an easy and safe itinerary, but the red-eye is an automatic “hard” rating from me, boss.
December 3: Washington, DC to Clemson.
Difficulty: Easy
Three different airlines offer direct flights from DC to Greenville-Spartansburg.
December 4: Clemson to Chapel Hill.
Difficulty: Easy
And for the closer, back to where it all started. It’s not really clear how one would make this trip. It’s quicker to drive than fly, but it’s a four-hour drive and after a month on the road, maybe that’s the better option.
Roger hit 27 different venues in four different time zones. Two trips probably required some flight or game luck for Roger to make his assignment. A bunch of others were on extra short rest.
The record for games in a season is 113 set by Groover and Kipp Kissinger last season. That’s a staggering number. I don’t think there’s a human who’s even attended that many games in a season. (I think it’s eight more than Kyle Whelliston went to, though the calendar length of the season is longer these days.)
It’s not clear if Ayers will topple that. Refs take more days off once conference play begins. Besides, while this feat was amazing, it was also unnecessary. Roger has proven he’s got more endurance than 99.9% of the population. We get it! Now get some rest, and we’ll (probably) see you at the Final Four.
We say “known record” because officiating data is famously sketchy. The officiating/coaching community has guilted me into keeping this database as accurate as possible, but there are still some omissions and errors, especially prior to last season.