I hope you all understand how difficult it was to blog from media day yesterday. WiFi was fine. Laptop complied. No bugs with the blog. But right in the middle of the day Curtis Shaw came in and did a seminar on officiating. I was not prepared for what came of it.

Shaw as the czar of officiating is one of my favorite things ever because it just makes no sense. Well, it made no sense. That change really goofed me up yesterday.

So while I was filtering Shaw jokes and trying to pay attention, I was also blindsided by the reality that he was up to something serviceable and maybe even logical and beneficial. He’s not the brainchild of this new initiative, and there is thick irony listening to that guy speak on the topic of there being too any whistles and that officials need to be a little more selective, but I actually think the game needs what the game is attempting to do.

Officiating  is not objective, though it’s supposed to be, and I think a lot of people would say the subjectiveness is a major problem. In theory, what officials are being asked to do is be even more subjective and decided what is and isn’t a foul. It sounds impossible — and it might be — but it’s probably not a bad idea. Games are harder and harder to watch and, really, we’re often talking about officials showing up to star in the show.

This could address that, so long as everyone agrees on the new definition of the word “foul.”

“Is contact a foul or is contact that disrupts a play being able to start and finish a foul?” he said. “That’s the difference. We got to appoint where we were blowing the whistle on slight contact and that contact would have nothing to do with the play. We were chopping the game up.”

I mean, I like the sound of that. Lord knows I agree with what he says. Not sure the idea, as good as it seems, can be implemented. Not sure you can trust the officials to adhere to this. I am sure it’s going to set off coaches, who are, at the same time, subjected to new rules governing bench decorum.

Shaw’s been out of the game for two seasons now — and his last game was WVU v. Duke in the 2012 Final Four — and don’t know if he knows what the world thinks of him, but he’s been an office guy for a while and he’s been rehabilitating the image of the official for the past two seasons. Yesterday he sounded like a guy who was attuned to the criticisms and the issues of officiating and was determined to make things right. Where that goes, we shall see. But for one day … Curtis Shaw, everybody!

I’m back in business tomorrow and I’m going to work on all three sides of the blog. I’ll take a look at the comments and see if we have ammo for F Double. The chat will be at 11 a.m. Tell the world my story.