Quote:
Originally posted by mplagrow
Coaches don't ask questions to learn the game. If they did, they would actually have a clue about the rules. They ask questions for one reason--to try to gain some type of advantage and (to their way of thinking) work the officials.
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OK, I don't want to disturb your generalizations too much but I am a coach who actually asks questions for at least three reasons.
1) Ask for more info about what happened. Especially in regard to fouls, I often want to know what an official saw and called early in a game so I can help my players adjust. Body contact, hit shooter's elbow, hacked dribbler's arm? Quick clarification so I can talk with my team at the break to add a focus that will help us clean it up if needed.
2) Rules clarification. I do read the rule book and I actually hang out on an officials forum to learn more about the rules, so, yes, I want to understand the rules. If I can get a quick clarification during the action I will ask for it. Sometimes I ask before or after a game if I'm curious and I remember to ask.
3) Working a situation - yes I do this sometimes. I have never asked a disingenuous question like, "he shot from 3 but landed in 2 so shouldn't that be a 2?" I agree with SMEngmann that this is bush. If I sincerely have a question, I ask it. On a very rare occasion, I'm convinced I know the rule better than the official (not so much in high school, but sometimes when I coached a 7th/8th-grade team for 2 seasons) but I would never say this directly to them out loud unless I completely lost my mind.
If the rules were simple enough to just absorb by reading the book, this forum wouldn't exist, right? If a coach is asking an ignorant question loudly he/she is showing demonstrating ignorance in front of players and fans/parents so the choices seem pretty straight-forward:
a) allow to continue to so he/she makes an idiot of him/herself and just ignore the question.
b) take pity and teach so he/she can choose between looking like an idiot and shutting up.
c) if you think the question is disingenuous warn or whack.
I know that fans and players and crappy coaches heap all sorts of unwarranted abuse on officials but the coaches I work with generally respect officials (even if they don't communicate it in the heat of battle) and are pretty discriminating between the good ones and the few they don't think are good. They also understand the difference between the call that drove them nuts and the overall professionalism of the official who made it. These are the coaches who I want to be the general examples who represent me.
[Edited by bebanovich on Feb 23rd, 2006 at 05:43 PM]