Coaches & Officials Meeting

[SC Official]

Originally Posted by Raymond

Well, in the case of the D3 supervisor, his asked the 12 HCs would they rather have an official who is a great communicator or an official who is a great play caller. By 11-1 the communicator won out.

We can poo-poo this all we want, but at the college level coaches do have influence with supervisors. If a veteran college supervisor (who is also used as a video observer for major conferences) feels it is important, I'm not going to act like I know better.

And, as some of you like to do, it doesn't mean a great communicator can be a crappy play-caller. What it means is that a great play-caller is going to suffer if he is a crappy communicator. And a 100% of the time when I hear discussions about veteran big-time officials whom I think are not that good, I find out that official has a great reputation for communicating and running a game.

I never said or implied that communication was not a big deal. Only that it may take on different meanings for coaches and officials. e.g. I am not going to spend my entire game talking to coaches like some officials (in high school and college) will, and the reality is that there are some coaches who take everything so personally, especially at the high school level, that they will think you are standoffish and/or a poor communicator in general if you're not willing to chit-chat at every opportunity.

[JRutledge]

Originally Posted by SC Official

I never said or implied that communication was not a big deal. Only that it may take on different meanings for coaches and officials. e.g. I am not going to spend my entire game talking to coaches like some officials (in high school and college) will, and the reality is that there are some coaches who take everything so personally, especially at the high school level, that they will think you are standoffish and/or a poor communicator in general if you're not willing to chit-chat at every opportunity.

Totally agree. Just looked at an email that was about a situation with an incident that I had with a coach (he was T'd up by my partner) some two seasons ago. He was given a T and wanted to continuously relitigate the issue with me during the game and I refused. I was trying to keep him in the game and told him as such. He took it personally and basically cursed us off the court and threatened me with the, "You will never work here again.....blah...blah....blah." Well, I worked there the very next season with the same official that gave him a T (a legend in our area) and we had no incident at all in the next game. BTW, that coach has been fired. I am not sure they won 5 games in the last two seasons. If I had listened to the coach, I would have communicated with him and likely he would have said something that would have got him ejected from that game. I was trying to just officiate a blowout and get out with as little strife as possible. I was not going to win by more communication because the communication we did previously obviously did not work.

Peace

[Raymond]

Originally Posted by SC Official

I never said or implied that communication was not a big deal. Only that it may take on different meanings for coaches and officials. e.g. I am not going to spend my entire game talking to coaches like some officials (in high school and college) will, and the reality is that there are some coaches who take everything so personally, especially at the high school level, that they will think you are standoffish and/or a poor communicator in general if you're not willing to chit-chat at every opportunity.

Being a good communicator does not mean chatting all game. And the D1 coach and D3 supervisor both said as much. The D1 coach said there's needs to be a point where an official says, in a professional manner, that enough is enough. And when that warning isn't heeded, then you popped the coach with a T.

But let's not pretend there aren't officials out there, HS and college, who don't come into games with the attitude that they are not going to have any communication with the coaches, because there are.

[SC Official]

Originally Posted by Raymond

Being a good communicator does not mean chatting all game. And the D1 coach and D3 supervisor both said as much. The D1 coach said there's needs to be a point where an official says, in a professional manner, that enough is enough. And when that warning isn't heeded, then you popped the coach with a T.

But let's not pretend there aren't officials out there, HS and college, who don't come into games with the attitude that they are not going to have any communication with the coaches, because there are.

1) I agree, but there are officials who think they need to explain themselves (or worse, their partners) every time they go beside the coach. Or not even explain themselves, just have a chummy conversation. And while most coaches don't expect that you will talk to them the whole game, there are some who do have just that expectation, and then when you shut down the communication because it's about to cross the line, that just makes things worse.

2) Agree again, but let's also not pretend like there aren't officials out there, HS and college, who spend the majority of the game conversing with coaches, for whatever reasons they may have. I would argue that this is just as detrimental as not communicating at all.

There aren't many, if any, absolutes in this business. Everything has a balance that each of us has to find. That's why it's an art.