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Old Sun Mar 14, 2010, 11:37am
jTheUmp jTheUmp is offline
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Join Date: Sep 2009
Location: Minneapolis, MN
Posts: 1,250
From the perspective of a thee-year football official, first year basketball official:

I wouldn't say one is necessarily harder then the other, but they are very different experiences.

Football has more complex rules, and a lot more players to watch on a given play (especially in undervarsity play when you only have a 2 person or 3 person crew). On the other hand, you usually get around 15 seconds or so of 'down time' between plays, which can help you mentally reset yourself. And in a regular 4- or 5-person crew, you generally know what you're going to be looking for before a play starts.

Basketball has relatively simple rules, but requires more snap judgements. your keys change much more rapidly then they do in football, and there's very little downtime. Also, the fans are generally much closer to the action, so they can be more of a distraction if you let them... on the other hand, basketball seems to have more of a 'Hot mom' component then football.

I haven't done baseball yet (although I'm starting this spring), so I can't make any comparisons there.
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