NFHS questionnaire

[so cal lurker]

Originally Posted by Rich

A coach wants a timeout. You know that. Now you gotta find a player who's ALSO asking for a timeout in order to grant it. Idiotic, just idiotic....mainly because too many officials lack situational awareness.

As someone who hates coaches calling time outs: With players only calling (as it was when I played) it's the responsibility of the players to get the official's attention, not the responsibility of the official to find the player. The official shouldn't care or be paying attention to what the coach wants.

From the comfort of the stands, it seems to me the coach TO is destructive -- coaches become irate that they haven't been seen and referees seem to have much more difficulty telling "which came first" with respect to violations or held balls when it involved a coach TO than a player -- I suspect because they are often in opposite directions. (And it may also be that it often looks like the referee got it wrong because folks in the stands don't see when the coach asked.)

Give the game back to the players -- permit fewer TOs and only let players call, er, request them. YMMV. (Heck I also wouldn't mind going back to the rule that there can't be TO after 80% of a count has expired, though I imagine that one was a nightmare to administrate, especially when the request went to an official not responsible for the count at the time.)