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I don't want to make overgeneralizations, so I'll just tell a couple of stories from my own experience. I think that human nature is human nature and some people just can't stay unaffected by the constant questioning from players or coaches. Even when the questions are not worthy of a technical foul, after a while they start to get under your skin.
In my first couple of years, I was terrible at dealing with players and coaches. Terrible. I had a 13U boys game in which one player would question me every trip down the floor. "Ref, he got hit", "Ref, he's holding me". You know the kinds of comments I'm talking about. Nothing profane, but the cumulative effect was making me start to boil. Finally, I had enough. But I didn't know what to do or say, so I said "Hey. Just shut up and play!" Looking back, that was a terrible way to handle the situation. By some stroke of luck, it happened to work and the kid did shut up and just played. But I would be lying if I said that his comments did not affect how I treated him. I don't think I ever altered any of my calls b/c of him, but through my comment I treated him badly.
Second example was in another rec league, this one I think was 11U boys. The situation was similar to my case above. But when this official had enough, his comment was "How many calls you think you're gonna get, if you keep talking to me?" I think the player got under his skin and he was telling the kid to shut up, or he wouldn't get any of the "close calls". Now, whether he really would've called the game that way, I don't know. But I think it was a good message to send the kid, although I don't like the way he said it.
All that is to say that I think it would be less than honest to assert that officials never allow the comments to affect them. Does it change the way they call the games? Hopefully not, but I don't think I can be quite as adamant as Mark P.
Chuck
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