Scott Padgett Did Not Enjoy Karl Hess' Ref Show

Karl Hess is an accomplished NCAA basketball referee who also enjoys the spotlight from time to time. He worked the East Tennessee-Samford game last night and, as sometimes happens, turned it into a Ref Show late. Tired of Samford coach Scott Padgett’s belly-aching, Hess rushed up on the 6-foot-9, 280-pound former player with the intention of, well, intimidation we guess.

Padgett didn’t much care for the escalation of tensions and after the game suggested that things may have played out differently out there in those streets.

It’s unclear if at any point Padgett channeled Tony and asked Hess to “step off,” which would have been the only appropriate response to the situation. Classic conflict resolution tactic, as good now as it was in the mid-1990s.