I know this is youth soccer, but the same happens to young basketball officials.
Here is a more extensive article.
Soccer mom and dads beware! Furious youth soccer referee posts videos of 'jerk' parents fighting on the sidelines and offers $100 for footage of brawls in a bid to stop the 'toxic environment'
- Ref Brian Barlow, 44, is fighting back against wild parents in Tulsa, Oklahoma
- The youth soccer official pays a $100 bounty for videos of sideline misbehavior
- Now he's speaking out about his mission to shame parents into better etiquette
By
Keith Griffith For Dailymail.com
Published: 23:44 EDT, 20 July 2018 | Updated: 00:14 EDT, 21 July 2018
A youth soccer referee who is fed up with parent misbehavior on the sidelines has decided to shame them by posting videos of their antics online.
Brian Barlow, 44, has been a youth league referee in Tulsa, Oklahoma for 14 years, and finally became so fed up with outrageous parent behavior that he launched a
Facebook page called
Offside to shame them.
'I do it to hold people accountable — to identify and call out the small percentage of parents who nonetheless create a toxic environment at youth sports,' Barlow, told the
New York Times in an article published on Wednesday.
'It's a very visual deterrent, and not just to the person caught on video but to others who ask themselves: Do I look like that jerk?'
Soliciting videos from across the country, Barlow offers to pay a $100 bounty if he decides to publish a submitted video.
Barlow calls the worst offenders - the screamers, abusers and brawlers - 'cheeseburgers'.
'It's the 2 per cent of people who make an absolute a** of themselves at a sporting event, usually a youth sporting event,' he explained in a video on the page. 'It's the people that are sitting on a sideline, usually in a chair... probably couldn't run a 100-yard dash if you gave them five minutes and a hundred dollar bill.'
Barlow, who works in marketing, says that the videos have had a positive effect on some parents.
One who was caught acting out even reformed so much that she decided to become a referee herself.
But for some rage-a-holics, the public shaming doesn't seem to spur self-reflection.
Barlow told the Times: 'Some people, frankly, want to punch me in the mouth.'