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Goose,
For someone who feels so content with the way he has situated officiating vis-a-vis the rest of his life, you certainly do protest a lot about officiating. Put differently, if officiating as an institution is so rife with problems, and it's not that much of a priority to you to begin with, why do some of these things bother you so much?
I still don't get your whole 'experience' argument. When you see five-year guys doing D1, dollars to donuts you're talking about people who have been getting top-level instruction for nearly their entire careers. This is worth years and years of experience. I have worked with countless guys in their early twenties who I would rather work with than some 20-yr vets I know. Practice doesn't make perfect, perfect practice makes perfect.
This is not limited to you, but I will ask you why you seem so fixated on signals. If your signals communicate well to everyone, then what's the problem? "Well, the manual says..." "But what about uniformity..." To these I say, so what? If an assignor is content with what you do, and you feel good about how your signals communicate to others, then what, exactly, is the problem?
I'll tell you what the answer is at the high school level in my state. Signals are given primacy because the powers that be don't know enough about actually officiating the game to be able to critique on anything but the most cut-and-dried of issues. Thus, approved signals = quality referee. Unfortunately, many of those officials with the "great signals" get exposed for the weak officials they are when post-season play arrives and the play is over their heads. I adapt and do what "they" want me to do, but I still think it's absurd--and does a great disservice to players and coaches--to put more emphasis on the cosmetic than on getting plays correct.
One caveat, though, is that I don't think that this is an example of assignors having "too much power." Assignors are what they are: distributors of games (read money), and to varying degrees, prestige. There's always going to be someone who distributes these goods, and to the extent that that's true, there will be some concentration of power. This is at best a problem without a problem, and at worst a problem without a solution.
As to your critique of the differences in expectations across assignors, all I can say to that is 'good luck.' Additionally, if you were to try to be progressive about the issue, to whom do you want to give the power to dictate which systems/theories will be given primacy in the standardization of assignors?
jb
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