Quote:
Originally Posted by JRutledge
I have never been under the impression the rankings matter much at all.
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My story has little to do with Arbiter, it's about numerical rankings.
In the past, rankings were a very big deal here in my little corner of Connecticut.
Rankings were mostly based on peer evaluations, but also on availability, test scores, and meeting attendance, and were refigured every year (I was on the rating committee, this was before computers, we all sat around a table with our calculators punching in thousands of numbers, sent in by snail mail, for an entire weekend).
Every single official on my local board was assigned a rank, from one to 325. There were cutoffs for assignment levels, for example, 1-90 all varsity, 91-120 both varsity and subvarsity, 121-325 subvarsity only (I'm guessing at all numbers in this post).
Within each level category, rank had an impact on the competitive level of games and the number of games one was assigned. For example, an official ranked 1 would get a ton of highly competitive varsity games, an official ranked 90 would only get a few noncompetitive varsity games. The rank and number of games to be assigned was actually spelled out in writing, for example officials with a rank of 21-30 were supposed be assigned 30 to 35 varsity games (again, guessing).
On top of that, a rookie officials had to wait four years to get any varsity assignments, and had to wait three more years to get all varsity assignments, regardless of their ranking (or ability).
We did away with all of that several years ago.
Now, instead of 325 individual rankings, we have only two groups, those that are eligible to officiate varsity games, and those that are eligible to only officiate subvarsity games.
How is that determined? Mostly by observations by members of our highly select, highly trained, high integrity, very experienced, very fair, highly committed to board service, evaluation committee (with a "dash" of Arbiter partner evaluations).
How is the competitive level of games and the number of games assigned determined? It's simply based on the experience, knowledge, and integrity of our assignment commissioner. He's out every night observing officials (scrimmages and games) and for those he isn't able to observe personally he uses the resources of the evaluation committee. He factors in your availability and assigns the games accordingly.
Test taking and meeting attendance now have nothing to do with ratings and rankings, but are handled within our system of fines and penalties.
A new transfer from a non-IAABO board (IAABO transfers get a similar assignments right away), or even a rookie official (rare, but theoretically possible), who have exceptional ability and are observed by our evaluation committee, or better yet, our assignment commissioner, can get varsity games right away, no waiting several years as it was in the past.
Almost all like the new system, sure, a few complaints from those that move down, or don't move up fast enough (those guys would probably also not like the old system), but most like the new system, probably because we have a great, hard working, honest, fair assignment commissioner that makes the new system work, and we also have a dedicated evaluation committee.