Coaches comments about 3 officials...

[Rich]

Originally Posted by Camron Rust

And that is the problem we have to some degree.

Given a fixed number of games on a given night, you need more people to cover the games when you go to 3-person crews. And like any group of people, you're going to have a few excellent officials, some more pretty good officials, a lot of just average officials, and so on down the line.

The assignor wasn't typically going to pull a strong official from a league still doing two to make a crew of 3 stronger and let the crew of two be left with the less capable official. So, the 3rd person being added was often someone that would not have typically been on that level of game otherwise. Only a few 3-person games where the assignor expected the need for 3 strong officials did he ever do so on purpose.

As a result, the average quality of the officials on 3-person games was often lower than it would have been in a 2-person crew. The coaches were seeing officials that hadn't previously worked at that level (or rarely so)....and often for a reason. Two strong officials can't always undo the damage done by a third that was in a bit over their head. That has been the case in probably too many games and that will not help the case of moving to 3 person permanently.

Unfortunately, too many of those 3rds that struggled will not have even realized they did so. :/

I've said this to coaches and to schools in the league I assign -- it's going to take a few years to get where 3-person has 3 strong officials on most games. The growing pains are worth it....and I think that typically two strong officials can carry a third who may need more seasoning provided the third understands that his job is to stay in his primary and get what needs to be called.