Yes and no. Generally officials hired by a league, but normally they are independent contractors, and free to work for whichever conference or conferences wish to hire them. In other sports (basketball, in particular), officials often work multiple leagues. This, combined with D-I basketball's wacky schedule, is how some of them are to the point of being full-time.

In hockey, I can't say I've noticed overlap between HEA and ECAC officials, but I haven't looked all that closely either. That said, hockey's schedule is such that practicality dictates that you'd be most likely to work for only one league. With Air Force being in AHA, are the officials for their home games really all flown in from the east?

What changes next year is that there will be one league (the Big 10) that will be much smaller than the others, so that even if the Big 10 hires only three crews, it's likely that one would be idle on many weeks. My suspicion is that we'll see much more cross-breeding between the leagues. 

The other thing to consider is that referees and linesmen may be treated differently. Linesmen may well stay within their home areas (regardless of league), while referees are flown all over.

John

Sent from my iPad

On 2012-12-09, at 9:01 PM, "Hampton, Nathan E." <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

> Only one of Charlie's list would I be confident about:
> j) which officials will work multiple leagues (say which leagues)
> and the answer to this is none -- you only get paid by a league, so all officials are employed by a league.