[bainsey]

Typically, it comes down to those who hire the officials.

I've officiated many an off-season game and scrimmage where illegal uniform rulings would never be considered. If IAABO assigns me, though, my instruction is to do my job and rule on it (save the typical Y-league game).

I believe I've told this story one here already: I had a middle school pair (girls, then boys) at the season's beginning. As I'm checking the book for the first game, I noticed what I should have noticed during warmups: the home team had numbers 6, 7, 8, and 9. (The principal ordered international numbers. He said he was a "hockey guy" and didn't know.) The coach, who played college ball, grumbled, not at me, but at the school for ordering them. ("I told them!")

Our instructions are to tape such numbers to make them legal, and while I was trying to figure out how in the hell you make such things happen with 6, 7, 8, AND 9, the coach says, "we have the old ones in the locker room." Beautiful! Problem solved, and the second game followed suit.

Yes, there are those that wouldn't have bothered with what I did. But I wouldn't be following boss's orders, and just as important, I would have made it the next crew's problem, who would also have the additional complaint, "but the last refs said it was okay!" Sometimes, you have to deal with dreck to save the sanity of your cohorts.