[rainmaker]

Originally Posted by ChuckElias

No, never. Every pre-game is going to be different for me, although I know that some people have a checklist that they go through every time.

The pre-game always begins one of two ways. If I haven't worked with the person very often, I start with "Have you had either of these teams before?" This lets the other person share whatever insight s/he has about style of play, talented players, etc. If I know the person pretty well and we've worked together, I usually ask, "How was Coach A last time you had him?" This again gets my partner to share some insight into what we might expect tonight.

Then we can move into (1) Coverage, (2) Contact, and (3) Game Management issues. And not all them always need to be discussed. For a guy that I've worked with 100 times, we don't need to talk about coverage. But we still need to talk about how we handle post play (even tho we both pretty much know already), and how we'll handle table screw-ups Coach A's blow-ups, etc.

For me, any list (even one that I wrote) is just a guide for the night's conversation.

Well, that makes more sense. I've never understood why go through the whole list as in the Official's Manual.