[Rich]

Originally posted by Nevadaref

Rich,
From reading your posts on forum I am convinced that you are a quality official and that you care about the game. So I will prevail upon you to reconsider this way of thinking. It seems backward and counterproductive to me.

I believe that the coach should behave better, not worse, after receiving his first technical foul. By stating that it takes more for you to give a coach his second T than his first, you are admitting that you will allow that coach to act even worse after he has been T'd. This can't be good for the game.

Almost everyone agrees that the technical foul should make the game better, and that starts with the coach's behavior.
He should now be seated for the rest of the game, and should be clearly aware that any more of the behavior that earned him his first technical foul will not be tolerated.
Why would we as officials want to send any message other than that to a coach?

You are probably subject to pressure from the local leagues, state office, and how the other officials from where you are do things, but would I certainly hope that all of them would be striving for good sportsmanship in high school athletics. Maybe you could lead the way.

I see your point, but keep in mind that the coach didn't act WORSE after the first technical, he just didn't act like an angel right away. The most egregious act was the one he got whacked for and my partner did the whacking. It was the right thing to do at the time.

Right after this it was halftime. We had a long discussion about how we were going to proceed at halftime. We decided that *I* would be the one who would give him the second one, if it came to that.

I guess I was a little loose with the language in my previous post. Had the coach did the same thing that got him the first technical a second time, he would've been ejected. What I was saying is that there are some technicals that are borderline calls (my partner usually makes those calls )-- you certainly don't want to eject over one of those.

I've ejected two coaches (one varsity, one JV) in 17 years. One was a coach who came after me in the locker room at halftime. The second was in the second quarter of a Christian school game and the coach got the first one about a minute into the game and the second one after accusing us of being homers.

I have no problems with technical fouls and using them where appropriate, but the longer I do this the less we get to that point. Part of this, I'm convinced is that I don't work games below HS varsity. Most of the really egregious behavior I see is in the subvarsity game before my own. Many of these situations is because the officials aren't experienced enough to communicate with the coaches properly and situations just escalate.

I love this conversation, though, because I'm always looking for a better way to manage game situations -- avoiding bad situations wherever possible.

--Rich