Arbiter assignors
 

Question for those who assign high school/college using ArbiterSports.

I've heard there is a category titled "Official Rank," where officials are assigned some sort of number value, i.e., 800, 700, 600 ... all the way to 100. The lower the number, the better, from my limited understanding.

Can anyone lend any insight into this and how it works, how it impacts assignments, can it change from game to game depending on the level of assignment and what the game requires, etc.?

Thanks.

I'm not an assignor, but I think this feature is designed more for when the assignor allows Arbiter to do the assigning. Arbiter will assign a mixture of officials based on their ratings. I'm assuming that individual games can be assigned certain ratings criteria.

I believe that is exactly how it works, but in my area, it is not used very much for individual conference assignors. I know I am specifically assigned to specific games (certain rivalries, closer locations or fill in assignments). So if there are the two top teams playing for the conference title every year, the assignor puts who he wants for that game. We have the largest consortium in the country we have been told and there are over 20 people that assign under that group. I have never been under the impression the rankings matter much at all.

Peace

Here's My Story, It's Sad But True (Runaround Sue, Dion, 1961) …
 

My story has little to do with Arbiter, it's about numerical rankings.

In the past, rankings were a very big deal here in my little corner of Connecticut.

Rankings were mostly based on peer evaluations, but also on availability, test scores, and meeting attendance, and were refigured every year (I was on the rating committee, this was before computers, we all sat around a table with our calculators punching in thousands of numbers, sent in by snail mail, for an entire weekend).

Every single official on my local board was assigned a rank, from one to 325. There were cutoffs for assignment levels, for example, 1-90 all varsity, 91-120 both varsity and subvarsity, 121-325 subvarsity only (I'm guessing at all numbers in this post).

Within each level category, rank had an impact on the competitive level of games and the number of games one was assigned. For example, an official ranked 1 would get a ton of highly competitive varsity games, an official ranked 90 would only get a few noncompetitive varsity games. The rank and number of games to be assigned was actually spelled out in writing, for example officials with a rank of 21-30 were supposed be assigned 30 to 35 varsity games (again, guessing).

On top of that, a rookie officials had to wait four years to get any varsity assignments, and had to wait three more years to get all varsity assignments, regardless of their ranking (or ability).

We did away with all of that several years ago.

Now, instead of 325 individual rankings, we have only two groups, those that are eligible to officiate varsity games, and those that are eligible to only officiate subvarsity games.

How is that determined? Mostly by observations by members of our highly select, highly trained, high integrity, very experienced, very fair, highly committed to board service, evaluation committee (with a "dash" of Arbiter partner evaluations).

How is the competitive level of games and the number of games assigned determined? It's simply based on the experience, knowledge, and integrity of our assignment commissioner. He's out every night observing officials (scrimmages and games) and for those he isn't able to observe personally he uses the resources of the evaluation committee. He factors in your availability and assigns the games accordingly.

Test taking and meeting attendance now have nothing to do with ratings and rankings, but are handled within our system of fines and penalties.

A new transfer from a non-IAABO board (IAABO transfers get a similar assignments right away), or even a rookie official (rare, but theoretically possible), who have exceptional ability and are observed by our evaluation committee, or better yet, our assignment commissioner, can get varsity games right away, no waiting several years as it was in the past.

Almost all like the new system, sure, a few complaints from those that move down, or don't move up fast enough (those guys would probably also not like the old system), but most like the new system, probably because we have a great, hard working, honest, fair assignment commissioner that makes the new system work, and we also have a dedicated evaluation committee.

Arbiter allows assignors to rate their officials between 100 and 900. It also allows the games to be rated and even the specific slots on each game can have a rating range placed on them.
For example, the R on a D1 BV game may have a rating range of 100-200, the U1 could be 100-300, and the U2 could be 100-400.
A set up such as that allows for the auto-assign to place officials with appropriate ratings onto that contest. The assignor may also manually assign the contest, and while doing so the pull down menu will only show officials in the eligible rating range. Of course, the assignor may manually override these restrictions when necessary.

Conversely, restricting ranges for the R and U on a GJV contest to 400-700, would prevent the higher rated officials in the group from getting placed on these games and allow for opportunities for the lower rated officials.

Of course, the system is only as good as the info provided. It is completely dependent upon a quality rating of the association’s officials. If people are not rated properly, then the system will produce poor crews.

In South Carolina all varsity games are assigned out of Columbia. What you describe is pretty much exactly how they do it: rank all ~700 officials based on the formula we have in place, rank all the games then randomly assign and make adjustments. Based on your ranking you could be an R on all games, an R on non-region games only, or only an Umpire. Where the lines are drawn just depends on how many games and available officials there are on a given night. With about 200 high schools, on a busy Tuesday/Friday night they need about 300 officials.

We also still get paid mileage both ways here. Schools generally limit what they'll pay to ~60 miles one way so that's also a factor in assignments. And officials can limit their mileage, too.

This is certainly true. Our ranking system contains no component of on-court ability. It's essentially entirely test-based. While the exam "technically" only accounts for 25%, the other points are pretty much a given as long as you have five years of experience (we have peer ratings which are a joke). You can imagine how this affects the quality of officiating, but it is what it is. There's not enough backing for a significant overhaul and the coaches don't complain enough, I guess.