"Hey Ref, that's five seconds!"

[JRutledge]

Originally Posted by BillyMac

Certainly true for officials who work under more than one rule set.

Not true for those of us that only work under one rule set. As a 100% high school official, and not a big college, or NBA, basketball fan, I go out of my way to avoid rule set comparisons. It's enough of a task for me to remember differences in NFHS rules from thirty-seven years ago and today, so I'm not even trying to understand NCAA, and NBA rules, especially different rules for different genders.

In my specific situation, I would prefer to be a master of one trade, and not a jack of all trades.

Then officials need to be smart enough to know that the NCAA or NBA might have a different rules set. We seem to do that very well in football and baseball. Half the time in those sports you would have to tell a coach and even sometimes a fan that they were thinking of a pro rule that in no way applied to the NF rule. There are many more NFL rules differences from the NF, but it does not stop an official to remind a coach, "There is no 5-yard contact rule" or "It is not an automatic first down for a personal foul." And it is not that hard to know these things as a football official. I do not understand why this is hard for basketball officials when the rules are almost identical in many ways?

Peace