Big Baller Forfeits

[ODog]

Originally Posted by so cal lurker

So, for those of you who do those club tournaments that aren't associated with a referee camp, do you call the games differently?

Absolutely. But not just for the reasons Nevadaref laid out regarding unreasonable game windows and paltry pay.

The coaches don't want the games called properly, and/or "tight." "This is AAU, man. You're gonna call THAT?!" I'm not sure what that means, since I would think the purpose of these games would be to prepare them for scholastic/collegiate basketball (aka "the real world"), while this philosophy achieves the exact opposite.

But because 95 percent of tournament hosts/site administrators won't support the ejection of paying fans and coaches, regardless of their level of civility, you do what you can to keep the games humming so the next batch of nutjobs can assume the court.

One technical to a coach who is likely long overdue for one is fine, and sometimes achieves the desired result. But a second is pointless, because you'll almost never have the site support to follow through with the penalty. And any AAU coach worth his backpack, slides and bluetooth will NEVER leave the confines when instructed to.

Coaches and fans generally lose their minds even more when their games are covered by officiating camps, because the games are officiated as they're supposed to be, and for whatever reason, nobody on the AAU circuit seems interested in that.

I always explain it to the layperson this way: If sanctioned high school/prep/college competition is a 95-100 on the "This is Basketball" scale with respect to rules, infrastructure and environment, AAU is like a 65.