Team catches & shoots w/ .3 left to win in WV Tournament

[SC Official]

Originally Posted by JRutledge

I think we are overreacting about this. This is a rule that should be known of course. But there are officials that do not know rules because they have never been put up against a situation to know the rule explicitly. It is bad, but should we be surprised at the high school level where all kinds of people do not know simple rules? High school officials honestly are on the lowest of the spectrum for accountability. For one most of our games never go into evaluating every call and you can be scratched for not talking to the coach in the right way, but not for messing up a technical foul sequence. I just do not know why we are so shocked by these situations. We have so many officials that go through the motions and never realize little things that might get them in big trouble and go around wondering why they are not in the big game slot.

Taking a closed book test is not going to solve that problem if you ask questions about the diameter of the division line instead of questions that actually could be faced in a game.

Peace

I've worked with lots of college officials that don't know NFHS or NCAA rules but get by because of "game management," how they look, kissing ass, etc. I also work with a lot of officials who know the rules at an acceptable level but are horrible test takers-and in South Carolina that will doom you no matter how good you are at everything else.

It's not exclusively a high school thing to be bad on the rules.

And to clarify, "game management" is not a bad thing. But I think it's an overused camp speak term that is often used to justify "making s*it up" when you don't know or don't want to apply the rules.

[JRutledge]

Originally Posted by SC Official

I've worked with lots of college officials that don't know NFHS or NCAA rules but get by because of "game management," how they look, kissing ass, etc. I also work with a lot of officials who know the rules at an acceptable level but are horrible test takers-and in South Carolina that will doom you no matter how good you are at everything else.

It's not exclusively a high school thing to be bad on the rules.

And to clarify, "game management" is not a bad thing. But I think it's an overused camp speak term that is often used to justify "making s*it up" when you don't know or don't want to apply the rules.

I did not say that college officials know the rules better. I said that HS officials are held to a much lower level of accountability. I have seen lower level college officials get suspended games because they miss a basic rule that the coach brings to the attention of the supervisor. I have seen basic rules missed in a high school game and no one ever said a word, but their fellow officials that happened to be at the game and told them what they did wrong directly.

I had a situation this year in a high school game where we misapplied a rule on technical fouls. We had a double T given and another player who came to the confrontation. I did not see the double T part or why the entire thing started. I just saw the second action. Now when we talked about what we were going to do, the action was treated like they were two separate situations and even a punch was thrown (which I did not see at all). We talked about it and it was clear that my partners at the time were very unclear on what the rule that applied and only a conversation in detail after the game brought more clarity that we did something wrong. We ended up ejecting two players from the same team and allowed a player that did some kind of fighting action to stay in the game. And this was basic. This was not a hard rule to figure out. None of us got in trouble, fired or suspended. It was even a joke with the assigner later when I worked with him because he did not realize I was on the game until we were about to work together when talking about the incident. It was a learning lesson for me as to how we get the information after the incident, but nothing happened in the long run from any level of the organization or state level.

And these are questions that are never asked in testing on the NF or state level. I know this year there were over 10 questions on the NF test that had questions about measurements of the ball, lines, net, or logos. Yep, that is making us better.

Peace