Quote:
Originally posted by IREFU2
The article is asking if there really a smoke-filled back room somewhere where fat cat officails and assigners meet to help only each other and leave the rest of us out in the cold or worse.
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Well here in Washington State, smoking is banned just about everywhere so the smoke-filled room couldn't happen.
I can only speak from my own experience. After my first year of officiating, I was rated near the bottom of our boys and girls associations. I was very raw and that is where I deserved to be.
I worked hard and took in every bit of advice and constructive criticism that I could and improved every year. As my ability improved, so did my rating. Now I am near the top in both groups. I have never attended the Friday night post-game referee gatherings at the local watering hole and have never seen a smoke-filled back room.
In my experience, the officials who blame politics for a rating that is lower than they think it should be are just using it as an excuse. They have holes in their games. Most of them don't attend camps, they argue with evaluators or they are satisfied with just calling fouls and violations and have never tried to expand their officiating game.
I am fortunate in that we have a peer-based ratings system that means that ratings come from a large group. I would not want to be in an area where one single person (perhaps the assignor) decides the rating of each official. I could see where that would reek of the perception of favoritism. Statistically speaking, it makes sense to have as many "inputs" as possible.
Z