Quote:
Originally Posted by JRutledge
Well, I can say this from personal experience. I am not sure that a number of people under 30 are all about a shortage of officials. In basketball in Illinois, we have actually about the same number of officials as we have had before in previous years. The numbers overall are down in raw numbers, but we are far from a shortage. I am not hearing of games not being covered. I am not hearing of times and dates to be changed. Maybe that is coming but not quite yet.
And as someone that teaches a new officials class in both basketball and has worked with the football class over the years as well, most newer officials are older and come into this when their kids get older and now they have time to officiate. I also think that this is about the economy as well. When the economy gets bad, people try to find other sources of income and often officiating is a good part-time job. The economy is a little better and those that got in when the economy crashed, now goes back to work or has more security and get out of officiating.
It must be also noted that if an official under 30 is any good, they can almost stop working high school basketball altogether and work college ball. I know guys that have 30 to 40 games in college and they hardly have any high school experience. Why would they work 100 high school games when they can make the same money working college ball with fewer headaches and time spent.
Now we need to do a better job as an officiating community to recruit officials at the younger ages. That is certainly the case. But part of the issue is that this is not appealing to those younger. I think a lot of younger people have no desire to put up with even being yelled at. I do not think that totally as to do with sportsmanship, I think that is just not a desire. Yes, sportsmanship is a problem and leading to all kinds of people to get out for sure. But I think even if you cleaned up some stuff, we still would have some that would never want to do this.
Peace
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The registered list might say the numbers are the same but its a HUGE problem down here. We lose people everyday..and can't really recruit...We have 5 or 10 retire every year and I might see two or three new faces.
BAS point is something that bothers me. Schools know who their idiots are...they could control them..However, those idiots might be parents voters etc. Administrators at games want to sit and watch. do nothing more...