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Old Tue May 26, 2020, 08:01pm
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Quote:
Originally Posted by JRutledge View Post
Let me add this last part. I work college football at the Division 3 level and have worked it for almost 8 years or so when they changed the system or the assigning process. I work for the B1G Alliance where they used D3 so that they can get all their officials for that work the MAC, Missouri Valley and even the B1G. All the newer D1 officials come from the D3 ranks for the most part within this Alliance. You know how they pick those officials to even be considered for D3? Who you know. Who you are related to. Who likes you and gives you a recommendation. There are not on-field independent camps where you can work to get some experience or be trained. There is a big training meeting before the season that we do not pay for if you are on a crew or you are on the supplemental list, but it is one day and absolutely no on field evaluation whatsoever. So people get invited to that meeting and hardly have a high school varsity schedule in many situations from my area.

Then I used to work D1 baseball for a brief period of time. I got that opportunity only because I had worked with a minor league umpire (at the time) during the basketball season at a high school basketball game in the middle of December. We had a great game together and got along very well. I had a conversation with this person and talked about how I was a baseball umpire and had some baseball experience at the college level. Well, the conversation went so well, Minor League Umpires went on strike later that fall and he passed my name along to the assignor and I got a call on Saturday of Easter Weekend to go to Valparaiso to finish working a two games of that series at the D1 level on Easter Sunday. I was not going to work the plate and I never had to show up to any camp to get that opportunity. That officials is now an MLB full-time umpire and it was by his word alone I even got considered. I worked for about 2 or 3 years in that conference and mostly worked D2 baseball, but never had to prove it beyond working a real game.

I say all of this because that is what happens without camps at all. Then if you have the right last name or your dad/uncle is in the NFL, then someone gives you a shot that you did not earn by talent or training alone. Certainly not anything a supervisor was exposed to. That is why I ask, "What is the solution?"

Peace
So you're implying that there isn't any nepotism/politics in basketball? Milk through the nose.

There are multiple 20-somethings in the southeast who are in D1 because of their last names.
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