Quote:
Originally Posted by JRutledge
...schools that assigned their own games for the most part, and if you did not pay a high enough fee, officials would on their own not go there. And the market in a sense dictated the fees going up. Because schools and conferences wanted to not have officials not go to their places just because of money alone. Basketball is a pretty big deal in this state. It is not difficult to come up with an extra $50 in your example. But so you know, most fees are in the $60 range now and some are higher.
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JRutledge: Good, informative post. Thanks. From your post I can see two reasons why I'm having trouble wrapping my arms around this three person issue, and, again, I'm in a, for the most part, two person state.
First. Individual schools in Connecticut do not set fees for officials. There is no competitive bidding. They all pay the same fee, as set by our state high school athletics governing body. So we all happily go where our assignment commissioner sends us. Travel never becomes an issue, because we have different assignment commissioners for each county. My longest trip is 50 miles, one way, and I'm seldom sent to that school. Many years ago we even stopped negotiating with the state body, and now we automatically accept a yearly fee increase equal to the average teacher pay increase across the entire state, so, for example, if the average increase in teachers' pay, statewide, is 2.5%, then we will get an automatic 2.5% increase in our game fees. No more yearly negotiating sessions in smoke filled rooms.
Second. I believe that Connecticut basketball officials may be some of the highest paid basketball officials in the nation. This is probably due to the general wealth of the state, as well as the high cost of living in the state. The varsity basketball fee for 2009-10 is $86.63. The subvarsity fee, which not only includes junior varsity games, but also includes freshman, and middle school, games, is $56.18. Only ice hockey gets more, $90.00 varsity, $58.00 subvarsity. To add a third official to a varsity basketball game would mean an additional $86.63 game cost to the school, meaning an additional cost of $866.30 over a ten game home schedule, and that's only for varsity three person games, it doesn't account for junior varsity three person games. To compound economic matters, we are about to enter our first year with mandatory fees, dictated by our state high school athletics governing body, for preseason scrimmages, I believe in the $50.00 range. Previously we officiated preseason scrimmages free of charge, or for some small, undetermined ahead of time, form of compensation (T-shirt, sandwich, pizza, $10, $20, etc.) that was decided by each individual school. This will now add an additional cost to the school's basketball officiating budget.
Connecticut may eventually catchup. Some of the big city schools in the southern part of the state occasionally use three officials for some of their "big rival" games, and three person crews are mandatory for the state quarterfinals, semifinals, and finals, in all three (school size) classes. The funny thing about the state tournament three person games, is that some of our best officials, that are selected by coaches, to officiate the state tournament, have litttle, or no, experience with three person mechanics, so we often see a lot of finger pointing as partners help each other in regard to where, and how, to switch. In some cases there is an NCAA official on the crew that kind of takes charge. Last season our local board had its first ever three person mechanics training session. You heard me right, first ever, in 2008. Only about a twenty officials, from a local board of over 250 officials, attended the session. I'm sure that the poor turnout for this training session was due to lack of confidence that Connecticut will be going to a lot of three person games anytime soon.