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As an official you have to place yourself in the position of being on the other side, in other words think about your response as if you would like to be responded to.
I notice the home coach has the card with our names on it in hand and is approaching me from his huddle at the center of the field, yelling that the visitor's QB had thrown the ball OOB on the bootleg play, and I've got to make that call.
You already know the coach is hot. Maybe your referee or the other wing has failed you by containing the coach. So you throw gasonline on the now burning coach. What is the result. A raging fire!
There were two things you could do, 1) simply let the coach vent with the hope he either lets it all out and your partners help contain, or, 2) politely in a calming voice tell the coach what you saw and why you called what you did from your vantage -- he deserves that. He may not agree but it may earn you respect points rather than the disrespect when you told him to go back to his huddle. Yes, it happened five minutes ago but what harm in an explanation? He knows you are not going to change it.
There may be nothing you could have done or said that will change his mind. To question his judgement, albeit flawed, inflammed the incident and the flag only made it worst.
Did you cause the coach to quit coaching and to lose by such a margin?
Probably not, but it could be argued you did.
What the coach may have done and what so many coaches do is used the incident to try to gain control of you, that is, he baited you and you took the bait. The rest of the game he wants you to give him "his" call out of guilt for blowing up. It happens and some coaches are masters at it. In other words, he owns you.
Think it is worth remembering every call or no-call we make, we make with the solid judgement that based upon what we observed and the rules is correct. Don't let any coach or player for that matter bait you into making a call without
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