Quote:
Originally posted by blindzebra
Your take from post one, was sprinkled with comments like.
On the tape, explaining to the assignor, yet now you say who's worried?
You are not addressing an issue by dealing with the problem, you are altering the way you are calling the game to deal with the player and not WHAT THE PLAYER DID.
This is not anything like changing mid-game for rough play, that is calling more to STOP out of control play. That's addressing the problem by calling what's causing the problem.
Your approach to this player is not, you are covering yourself from explaining what the T was for, and not dealing with the kid's behavior.
Like it or not the kid DID imply that your partner was racially biased, I don't care HOW he said it, he said it.
Let's add a wrinkle. A non-vanilla sprinkle player hears what the kid said, and you being a sprinkle don't penalize it, and in your original post you did not even go as far as to verbally address the issue, now you call a close one on a non-sprinkle player. Did you not just open the door for this player to also question your integrity?
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In 2003 I was working a varsity football game. One school was all white. The other had only a couple of Black kids on the team. I did not notice this really until this particular incident happen. Well the make up of my football crew is 2 Black officials and 3 white officials. I am the Referee (if you have not figured out what color I am by now, I am Black) and my Umpire is Black as well. Both my wings and BJ are all white.
Now sometime in the first half one of the Black players on the home team accused the other team of calling him the "N-word." Now the two people that would likely have heard it, was both myself and my umpire. It would not surprise me that someone used that word in a pile or somewhere on the field, but I cannot penalize anything I did not hear. The kid got upset and then accused one of my partners (the crew chief) of saying the same thing. This kid later snapped and took off his helmet and hit himself with it. The kid was bleeding as a result and was all over the coach. Well the coach was a winner as well and I personally had given an Unsportsmanlike Foul to the coach at about the same time this kid went ballistic about being called the "N-word." I was personally was unaware of this incident until we came together to access all the fouls (3 were given against this one team). After I realized what was going on and we had to explain why this kid was now ejected from the game, we had to justify our actions. When we told the coach what had happen, the coaching staff claimed this kid was the most outstanding individual and would never act in anyway without being provoked. When halftime came, an assistant coach tried to approach us accusing one of my partner's of using the "N-word" (not the Black guys btw). When this was happening I was still unaware of all the circumstances that took place with this kid and why he was ejected from the game. When we got to our stop for halftime, the Principal of the school was asking us what had happen and what the kid said and did. He also backed up the story about how great this kid was and "He would not do anything like that. That is not the kind of character he has."
When the game was over, the AD echoed the very same thing. "He would not act that way without someone provoking him."
So instead of the actions of the kid were in question, our actions were really in question. Now I must make it clear that all the coaches were white and accusing the white officials on the crew of making inappropriate statements. It was surreal because you would think they would just look at me and my umpire and see that we might not tolerate that kind of behavior. Instead of focusing on the actions of the player, the integrity of our crew was questioned and I am the face of that crew.
Now in football you do not have a foul system that can really eject a player. Of course you have Unsportsmanlike fouls to help you, but those have to be there or justified. If I give a player or coach one of those I have to file a report with the state office. If I foul out a kid or his coach sets him on the bench for fouls, I do not have to justify anything.
There is a reason we teach officials to stay away from the table or when we talk to a coach, have a witness. We want to take away the doubt if something goes wrong. If a player approaches me one on one, it is his word against mine. And most coaches I know will take the kids word over my word or the word of my partner. Of course some coaches will stand up and take issue with the actions of the kid and might make him run in practice until the cows come home. But it is not the honorable coach I am looking to take action. So I will handle it another way instead of taking the easy way out. He will get the message that we are not on the same page. I would even take a very similar route as BITS suggested. Just T'ing in my book is not automatically the answer.
Peace