The Hidden Pressure on College Sports’ Quietest Officials

The Hidden Pressure on College Sports’ Quietest Officials
Crossover season is exposing a hidden strain in college athletics; schools short on resources, stat crews short on training, and growing scrutiny from bettors and players.

Good morning, and thanks for spending part of your day with Extra Points.

I spent about 13 hours yesterday driving to and from Flint, Michigan for a non-work related thing...which means I walked in the door around 10 PM and was ready to pass out.

That means today is a great day to share a freelance story from our regular contributor, KC. Today, we have a perspective on something that I've known intellectually for a while (sports communication departments are often hilariously understaffed) but hadn’t completely internalized.

In a world where individual sports statistical data is more important than ever (thanks, in part, to gaming interests)…who is actually keeping track of stuff like blocked shots or steals?

I’ll turn the time over to him.

The long, loose ball that made the audible “brick” sound, sending echoes through the arena and players diving in the paint late in the second half. For a moment, it looked like one player had control, then somehow lost it. A swipe came in from behind but clearly missed. The ball ricocheted again, brushed hands from both teams, and landed near the rim where a waiting player scooped it up for a quick layup.

Assist. Rebound. Steal. Turnover. Who gets it?

And more importantly, who decides?

For most fans, the answer is simple. The scoreboard updates. The box score posts. The broadcast scrolls on. But behind that instant update sits one of the least visible decision-makers in college athletics: the sports information staffer or stat crew member who makes the call in real time and locks it into the semi-permanent record.

Those calls matter more than ever.

Not just for coaches and players who track performance. Not just for the media and historians. In an era of legalized sports betting, prop markets, and algorithm-driven analytics, a single stat line can ripple outward into wagers, incentives, NIL and online backlash. And the people making those decisions are often overworked, undertrained, or learning on the fly.

Jaden Johnson knows that chaos well.

He’s Utah State’s assistant communications coordinator, who now covers soccer, softball, and, most visibly, the Aggies’ men’s basketball team. Johnson lives in the gray space between public relations, storytelling, crisis response and unofficial technology support. On paper, his job is to help present student-athletes and coaches in the best possible light. In practice, it is a rotating checklist that can change by the hour.

“It varies day to day,” said Johnson, who came to Utah State after a stint at Marquette. “The brunt of it is running social media, organizing media opportunities, putting together game notes, shooting photos and video, really just trying to paint the team in the most positive light possible. But it can be anything.”

That “anything” now includes a front-row seat to the culture shift driven by modern betting markets.

“Absolutely countless,” Johnson said when asked how often bettors interact with team accounts online. “This year is worse than ever. Some games, especially if we’re not playing well, it’s 90 percent bettors in the mentions. Same kind of account every time. Nameless, faceless, two followers with no posts, just replies. And it’s gotten far more common and far more vulgar.”