[BillyMac]

From BillyMac: "There's not a single official on the tournament list who would get a "Why is he or she on the tournament list?" from me."

From Back In the Saddle: "This is absolutely not the same as "the best officials." Well, unless the officials who worked the tourney are the only officials that you wouldn't question. But I'm pretty sure if you looked around, there are other officials in your group who could have worked the tourney also without raising any eyebrows."

True, but there are only a limited number of spots to be filled. In Connecticut, only about 60% of the teams make the single elimination state tournament, thus decreasing the number of officials that need to work. The point that I was trying to make was, that in our system, those who make it seem to deserve it, i.e the coaches ratings and our peer ratings seem to agree. You are right in that there are other officials who don't make it who may not be better than those that do make it, but are certainly as good as those who do make it.

There's probably more than a correlation here, maybe a cause and effect. Those who are considered the best by our peer ratings get the most games, thus getting the most exposure, and thus getting a chance to get votes by the coaches. In other words, work a lot of games, improve your chances of getting selected by the coaches.

I can't explain in fully, but here we get very little "grumbling" about who makes or doesn't make the state tournament. We spend most of our time "grumbling" about our own peer rating system.