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Thanks for all the encouragement, no wonder you guys have such an elitist reputation. I would hope that if any of you would want to officiate other sports that you would get more encouragement than I have received here.
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Its hardly elitist. Its more common sense. I don't understand soccer much (and don't work it; I do hoops and football), and I played it for probably 8 or so years as a kid. Hell, I don't even umpire baseball (because if I did the batter would have to have a boat paddle to hit everything I'd call a strike), and I played more of that than anything. I would never recommend someone officiate a sport they haven't played at least some form of. You don't have to have been an all-american or even have played on your high school varsity team. But you better know the game pretty well, because almost everyone else on the field will. I understand the games of basketball and football very well and while officiating them isn't easy by any stretch, I have a very good idea of how to judge contact, for example, in basketball, and pass interference (or holding), for example, in football.
It isn't enough to just learn the rules and go out there. Officiating, in most sports, is about creating a balance of play and penalizing a team for committing a rules infractions that gives them an unfair advantage. To know what an unfair advantage is, you have to know the sport reasonably well. Soccer may or may not fit under that guideline, but to know whether it does, you need to know the game.