Why Does The NCAA Have Conference-Specific Officials, Anyway?

Anyone who's seen the utter carnage on the internet over the controversial ending of the Oklahoma-Oregon game has stumbled across dozens of ALL CAPS rants against Pac-10 officials claiming conspiracies worthy of The X-Files or even Penn State fans. It's madness. The ref in question is getting death threats. OU drops severely in the polls. OU is threatening to cancel its upcoming series against Washington. The word "Stoopefying" got created.

Lord knows that I stumbled into a hornet's nest when I caught the last minute and a half of the game, scoffed at Bob Stoops' botched clock management, and left it at that. Within minutes the comments of the post were flooded with seriously pissed off OU fans demanding to know how someone so stupid could write for AOL.

We'll probably never have an answer to that eternal conundrum, but we can explore another: why do "Pac-10" refs even exist? A good portion of the anger out there is specifically directed at what seems like an awful convenient arrangement where the Pac-10 requires its refs to be used at non-conference home games, who then proceed to screw the visitors out of victory. When the Pac-10 goes on the road, Pac-10 refs are generally used since across the rest of college football, the visitor brings the crew.

Thus, plenty of OMG LOL conspiracy theories!!!one! And for what? The convenience of not flying refs all over the country, except when they do because there's a non-conference game to go to? If you live in Michigan, refereeing a game at Happy Valley is about as inconvenient as refereeing one in Florida. So why have conference-affiliated refs at all? There's an interesting article from USA Today raising that same question. Sooper Genius-slayer Lloyd Carr thinks eliminating that affiliation might be a good idea:

"Certainly it's an argument that needs to be explored, and if they could do it, I think it would be one of the real positive things that we could do to make the game, from an intersectional standpoint, fairer," Carr said.

Carr would know after Michigan's recent travails on the West Coast.

So... shouldn't officials be pooled nationwide? Is there any downside to this?