So I'm lying in bed watching the NFL Playoffs and seeing the officials huddling up to discuss a call reminded me of the Sugar Bears game Thursday night where the officials never huddled up to discuss the ball, and allowed an entire half to be played using a men's ball (Henderson won the men's ball half 34-26. UCA outscored them 47-43 with the women's ball). How that happens is beyond me.

It doesn't take a real genius to differentiate between a women's basketball and a men's basketball. Back in junior high when they still rolled out a cart of balls for people to shoot around with prior to school (amazing idea. It got kids showing up to school at like 7 a.m. I think this practice was disbanded because the coach didn't want his precious floor ruined, as he was overcome with worry that a pair of Doc Marten's would shred wood. Also, teachers complained of stinky, sweaty, smelly students reporting to first period) there would always be a couple girls' balls mixed in with the guys'. It wasn't hard to tell. It might've been at first upon eyesight, especially when one looked just like the best guys' ball that people would fight over, but if you didn't figure it out then, you knew as soon as you picked it up.

And that's just for a junior high kid. From time to time, people are going to get that confused ... but if it's a junior high kid, a janitor, a principal, a fan, whatever, it really doesn't matter if they can't instantly differentiate between a men's and women's basketball. An official, somebody paid to know the rules and regulations inside and out, has to know. I don't expect them to know if the ball is inflated to 9 pounds or whatever, but there's no good excuse for not knowing you're not using a women's ball in a women's game.

It's not something that just pops up spontaneously, either. The officials have all sorts of time prior to the game to select a game ball, squeeze it, give it a kick, twirl it around, shoot it, whatever. If nothing else, they have to get it in hand and trot out to halfcourt for the opening tip. That's plenty of time to realize the ball in your hand is not regulation size.

And if that's not bad enough, you go through 20 minutes of action and never once realize it? Way to be on top of things. And if somebody says something to you about it and you disregard it, that makes it even worse.

But anyway ... since officials Nelson Ruscin, Kerry Henson and Kirk Paitsel have shown us that rules and regulations are discretionary in the Gulf South Conference, I got to thinking about things I would do if I were a GSC official. You could really have some fun, since you can roll out whatever equipment you want.

I think we'd just scrap the regulation women's ball altogether and replace it with the men's ball. And the men, instead of using their traditional ball, would use weighted balls. This would make the 3-pointer a bit more difficult.

If I were a coach, I'd also look into raising/lowering the goal a few inches for each game based on your opponents' strengths and weaknesses.

The possibilities are just about endless. Use softballs with softer or harder cores, again depending upon the opposition. Does your quarterback have small hands but a strong arm? You've got a receiver with a ton of speed ... why not roll out a youth-sized ball and fling that beast 85 yards? I'm not a big fan of soccer balls, so I say get rid of those things too and replace them with kickballs or maybe even a football. Can you imagine futbol being played with a football? That would be awesome.

With UCA leaving the conference and a couple other schools potentially eyeing a move, the GSC could be in trouble here in a few years. If they want to stay alive and prosper in the coming years, they need to keep an eye toward the future and be proactive in marketing their product. Doing innovative things like those mentioned above is a great way to get started.

Play tennis with one of those rubber bouncy pink super balls. Keep a little slack in the volleyball nets so that it's easier to get some vicious spike action by even the shortest of players. In golf competitions, make things interesting by using plastic wiffle practice balls. In the GSC, impossible is nothing (that sentence brought to you by the Gulf South Conference and adidas).