Quote:
Originally Posted by Dbyb
JV-G game. At 3 minutes in the 4th quarter R goes to table and asks for time outs left to each team. Scorer says Home has 0 time outs left and Visitors have 1. R conveys this information to each coach. At 1 minute left, Visitor coach calls a time out. R grants the time out, reports it and has the timer start the clock. Scorer then tells the R that Visitors, in fact, had no timeouts left and that earlier she had made a mistake and should have said Home had 1time out and Visitors had 0. (The 16 year old scorer just reversed the time outs and there was no visitor book to cross check). R now assesses a tech to the Visitors. Visitor coach is understandably upset having taken a time out that she was informed she had and then assessed a tech for not having it. The tech was assessed, both shots made, and she lost by 1 point.
Once the time out had been granted, was there any other option than the one we took?
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Jurassic Referee
Interesting. You have a local rules interpreter that advocates ignoring a very plainly written rule. And you haven't found any officials at all in your area that would also also follow a plainly written rule--for whatever reasons. And you've got a state final official that also wouldn't follow a plainly written rule. A state final official that would grant a TO, find out that it's an excess TO, and then cancel the TO so that he didn't have to call a "T". I'd love to see your state final official make that call at the end of a state championship game. Fwiw and if it'll make you feel better, Chris Webber would probably agree with that state official in a heartbeat though .  Methinks that your area has a heckuva lot of work to do in the education of their officials. Note that's jmo.
In my experience, I don't know one good official that wouldn't make that call. They might not like the rule personally and they also personally might not want to follow the rule, but they would do it. the caveat obviously is that I and they are not in your area(I think).
And information from the scorebook is..well... official? Cool. Gee, I take it that under that philosophy we can't go back and correct any scorer's errors made under rule 2-10 or fix any scorer's mistakes under rule 2-11-11 either. Heckuva idea ...and a heckuva rules interpreter you got there, Coach. Btw, mentioning rule 2-11-11, I guess your rules interpreter never read the l'il sentence in there that says "A bookkeeping mistake may be corrected at any time until the referee approves the final score. Nope, once it's entered in the scorebook, it's ..well...official.
And right there, folks, you'll find the biggest difference between how a coach thinks and how an official thinks. A coach thinks that a rule should only be valid and enforced if it's fair to his team in his opinion. An official knows that the rules were written trying to be fair to BOTH teams, and that if we won't follow a plainly written rule it not only gives an unfair advantage to one team but it unfairly penalizes the other team at the same time. You only worry about YOUR team, coach. But we have to worry about BOTH teams. And if we don't call that deserved "T" in the play being discussed, we just screwed the other team.
Sorry, coach, we completely disagree philosophically on this one and we always will. |
JR,
First of all, once I got beyond my view, I am only the messenger.
At the same time, there are a few other interesting aspects to this situation. Keep in mind that in this case -- and ALL cases, there are TWO coaches. I am typically the coach with at least one or two timeouts left. My trusty scorekeeper is always working directly with the official book when he is not the official book to confirm all timeouts. It is a very rare game, indeed, when I do not know EXACTLY how many timeouts I have left. But, that is another discussion.
Per the original post, BOTH coaches were informed of the timeout situation. Apparently, the home coach was OK when told he was out of timeouts. He likely would have heard that the other team had one timeout left, as well. If he had a problem with the accuracy of the book, this would have provided a great time to argue for an additional timeout, if he did, in fact, deserve it. Yet, he said NOTHING. Therefore, when that timeout was called, I am guessing that the home coach did not feel as though he was getting "screwed" ME THINKS he thought that the officials properly permitted his opponent to receive his/her fifth and final timeout.
In this situation, the "Official Book" SPOKE -- rather than just being written. Neither my rules interpreter nor I believe that a book CANNOT be changed. However, if the book was SPOKEN officially to indicate one thing, the book better be SPOKEN again to correct the error. This should mean, sounding the horn (TWO MINUTES elapsed in the post -- NO EXCUSE for not conveying this information to the game officials AND the coaches) to officially CHANGE the book.
My concern is that what actually may have happened here is that someone may have gotten into the ear of the 16 year old scorekeeper and convinced her to change the book -- quite probably "screwing" the visiting team.
This "convenient" HOME TEAM official book change CLEARLY was a MAjOR benefit to the HOME TEAM. If you are OK with that, that is fine. But, as you have stated we philosophically disagree that an on-the-fly "stealth" change is "fair" and within the rules. I -- eitther as an official, as the visiting coach, as the home coach or as a coach simply watching the game feel that such a change to the official scorebook should require notification that such a change has taken place -- keep in mind, the scorer kept his/her little "secret" (the change is timeouts remaining) for a FULL ONE HUNDRED TWENTY SECONDS!!! Failure to notify a change in the book in this case is a failure to make a change and we are going with what the scorer's documentation last indicated.