I have said a lot tamer things on CB and been burned to the ground for it

Your dad has it right. If a reff has 10 years or so on him it is pretty hard to change. New reffs are working on improving their game. Old reffs are set in their ways. Once you know the reffs you can tell what kind of game you are going to get when you see them on the court. But a lot of times the things that an evaluator sees are not what the fan sees. In my example Thornley called 4 Ts in a row. Hall and Harris should have helped him. Most fans wouldn't even notice that. For me - after 25+ years of officiating the benefit to an evaluation is not learning new things - it's helping to correct bad and lazy habits that creep into my game - or learning to take better angles because I can't keep up with the players like I used to. Very little of what an evaluator says is new to me - it is just a good reminder, and usually I know I made the mistake before the evaluator writes it down.

The real deal is this though. Reffs are just like the athletes, there are good ones and bad ones. An important part of the evaluations are to rank the officials so you don't put the three worst officials in the association together on the same game, or so you don't put them on the biggest games. This is more important in high school because anyone willing to blow a whistle and take abuse can be a reff, so you really need to put the weak officials with the good ones. In college all the officials should be able to stand on their own, but there are still good ones and bad ones.

The things people see in the games were the same 10 years ago, 20 years ago and 50 years ago; and I expect that they will be the same 10 years from now.