In Reply to: Questions on college gymnastics judging: posted by BluBlood on February 24, 2019 at 14:37:32
Judges come up through the ranks similar to the way MLB umps. They are volunteers but a paid a small amount. They try to rotate around to different conferences but are somewhat restricted by monetary considerations.
Judging is not consistent meet to meet but tends to be biased for home meets in the different conferences, hence the use of a regional qualifying score to rank the teams nationally. The RQS is sort of an average of the scores over the season but ensuring equal emphasis on away meet scores.
All the teams see a tightening of the scoring in the post-season because judges from around the nation are brought together, there is no home team conference and there are 6 judges per event instead of 2.
The biggest complaint is over scoring in the SEC.