I don't think I'd be holding up soccer as some sort of rule objective to emulate. I don't know of many basketball officials who have been assassinated because they screwed up a game. That happens some in soccer.
You have only one referee in a soccer game. He has an autonomy that I don't think any of us would like to see in American sports. He calls what he wants to, and passes on what he wants to. And if somebody is made enough to make the disagreement known, then he cards them.
Soccer players are known to flop and roll on the ground in agony, and then get up to start running around.
The thing about American sports is that we expect some accountability from our sports officials and we hate it when our team is negatively affected by subjectivity in the way the game is called. That means some more details in the rule book.
One reason that college sport have longer rule books is because you don't have some sort of overseeing officiating regulatory group. Each conference is responsible for it's own officials. Most use a handful of official assigners, who are very behind the scenes. There used to be a guy named Dale Kelly who did a lot of assigning of officials in major conferences. Another guy, named Tony Stigliano did the same task for lesser conferences local to Texas ad adjoining states.
You went to those guys' camps, paid to be there, and kissed their, uh, feet to create some sort of homage, You wanted to work college ball and you were from Texas, you did whatever was necessary to make Tony happy. I don't know if either of those guys still have those jobs. But they were not part of any specific conference affiliation. It was more like a guy that gave them a separateness about specific assignments, but also allowed for feedback about whose work they liked and whose they didn't. Kelly served a higher purpose. Back then, which was close to two decades ago, you were paid $500 for a men's game in a major conference plus maybe close to that in travel expenses for plane trips and a hotel room.
The point in relating all of this was that there were guys like that in several locations around the country. And each had their own conference administrators to make happy. But each conference has its own preference. Back then, the BEast wanted a no blood, no foul approach and those were the kinds of officials that got those games.
Other conferences had their own preferences. And anyone who thinks that a little politics isn't involved, don't really understand. And officials who are at the top of all that, understand the politics of it. It is part of why a rule book needs a lot of explanation.
But each conference has things they want emphasized. And the best officials will do the same basic things. THey will protect the shooter, they will clean up post play. They will pass on the marginal call that doesn't affect a play's advantage / disadvantage. And they will play the role they're there to play. An old saying, "If you are U2, don't forget that you're U2." What that basically means is that if you are at the bottom of the totem pole, you understand that the guy tossing the ball is your senior official, who is more experienced and usually more trusted. In your pregame, if he tells you not to call three seconds ever, then you'd better not do it. If he thinks it needs to be called, he'll call it.
And unlike football crews these days, you are not a crew. You are assigned to each game individually. So you have to find a way to mesh with the other guys on your crew. What any particular play requires a foul be called is very subjective. It's a lot more about advantage than amount of contact. But that crew, that night, really needs to try to call the same thing.
Having explicitly explained specifics can be really useful in this task. It is a lot better recently with some nationally stressed rules expectations, about defensive players using their hands in certain specific ways. The way that the NCAA got the attention of officials, was those who wouldn't comply with the new limitations were excluded from NCAA tournament games. It worked. Now arm bars are called pretty consistently.
Play has been cleaned up. Most muggings get called. The game is more fun to watch. You still have guys who allow more contact, but they mostly take seriously the need to allow less contact. One of the reasons that the rule book for college athletics has to be so wordy, is to get to the heads of officials, the ideas that will get them to overcome their attitudes of "my game, my call," and try to get most of the guys from different areas of the country, to call something a lot closer to the same game.
Some of the best officials quit officiated because they wanted to call their game and wouldn't change and it negatively affected their assignments.
Same thing happened in the NBA with guys like Jake O'Donnell. He used to be a common name in game sevens. A year later, he was on the outside looking in. Sometimes, it takes some pretty drastic means to get officials to call the game, the way it ought to be called.
