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In Nebraska, Officials are classified in 3 tiers.
Highest tier is at least 4 years of varsity experience (4+ games a season) open book test over 95% and closed book test over 85 at least once every 3 years.
Middle tier is at least 2 years of varsity experience, open book test over 90 and closed book test over 80 at least once every 5 years.
Lowest tier is everybody else who can manage an 80 on the open book test and a 65 or better once every 5 years on the closed book test.
We are told that preference is given to crews with more officials at the highest tier, and that crews are observed and evaluated, but our crew hasn't been observed in 3+ years and as a crew chief for 2 years I have never been observed (even though we worked 1st round of playoffs last 2 seasons)
The second consideration we are told is the geographic locations and availablity.
In reality...it appears to be assumed that officials in Lincoln and Omaha know more about officiating than most of the rest of us. Two years ago our local team hosted a 2nd round playoff game in 8-man and though there were 3 crews around us with good experience and plenty of 8-man experience they sent a crew from Omaha that had not worked an 8-man game since they went to 5-man crews. (I worked chains and spoke quite a bit with the linesman)
Frustrating thing is, that up until this year if anyone wanted to attend a clinic or anything in our state they had to drive to Lincoln (with people in Lincoln complaining about driving to Grand Island for the state fair) Of the 6 classes and 6 state finals, 1 crew comes from Omaha, 1 from Omaha suburbs, 1 or 2 from Lincoln and another 1 from the eastern area. Usually only 1 crew every other year comes from the western 2/3 of the state.
And yet schools and the NSAA can't figure out why officials in the western part of the state don't stick around very long, and the ones that do, generally don't care enough to work at it and improve.
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