Are umpire associations to blame

[PeteBooth]

Huskerblue's recent thread (Another Umpire assaulted) and lawump (Yet another blown call) prompted me for this thread.

Rich and rightly so will no longer umpire for that league HOWEVER, the fact is some umpire association or independent contractor will and perhaps a similar incident to the one Rich experienced will happen again.

The Minor League umpires went on strike YET MLB found another outlet.

The point I am making is this.

In the NCAA if a school violates NCAA policy ie; teams like SMU (who was once a power- house in the old South-Western Conference in football with the likes of Eric Dickerson and Craig James) , Kentucky and UNLV (under Tarkanian) in basketball plus a host of others, these schools receive the "death penalty" so to speak by not being able to appear in tournaments and also cut down on the number of scholarships they can give.

Therefore, should teams such as the one Rich encountered be "blackballed" from all Officials. In other words, no Umpire association or independent contractor should have anything to do with this team.

If umpire associations do not stick up for one another it appears nothing will get done. These teams get a "pat on the wrist" and go on there merry way and unfortunately the next group of officials will get burned.

I realize in the world of officating this is difficult to do but generally speaking what do you think of the concept or do you have other ideas on how to treat schools or teams such as the ones we have heard about lately.

Thanks

Pete Booth