Thursday, July 03, 2008

NBA Hires Army Maj. General to Oversee Referees - washingtonpost.com

NBA Hires Army Maj. General to Oversee Referees - washingtonpost.com

NEW YORK -- The NBA hired Army Maj. Gen. Ronald L. Johnson on Tuesday as senior vice president of referee operations, a newly created position to help strengthen the league's officiating programs following the Tim Donaghy scandal.
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Johnson recently retired after 32 years of service as a combat engineer. He was commanding general of the Army Corps of Engineers, Gulf Region division, from 2003-04, responsible for overseeing $18 billion of reconstruction in Iraq.

"Ron's wealth of leadership and management experience, together with his engineering expertise in areas such as systems analysis, processes, and operations, make him an ideal candidate to lead our officiating program," Stern said in a statement. "Our referees are the best in the world but they never stop striving to improve and Ron has made a career out of getting the very best out of people."
I don't know crap about basketball, refereeing, or civil engineering, but I do know that officers almost never have any practical hands on experience. They don't pay Generals to engineer, they pay them to lead and manage.

I predict he will be just as successful as Vice Admiral David L. Brewer, III.