It's a New Day now

[Kansas Ref]

At a recent camp (for 1st year thru 5th year officials) during the closing session one of the senior clinicians went over a few take home points. One of the items he emphasized was that--and I shall paraphrase..."In the old days we would never talk to a player and seldom talk to the coach. If a player had an issue with a call then that player would keep it to himself; but these days the players feel like that they can "discuss" every call you make on them. In the old days we'd T them up if they even looked at us in a dismissive manner. But I'm here to tell you that in today's game you should be more tolerant of players who want to discuss calls, make an effort to listen to them because it shows that you are not a stubborn jack-ass and it keeps the game under better control. I implore you all to try it out"

I know exactly what he meant. Because when I was a player (many years ago) our coach would warn us to "be quiet" if a ref makes a bad call on you--let me deal with that ref-not you!"

However, in today's game, this mindset of being "stand-off-ish" towards players is old-fashioned, in today's game we refs should be more 'compassionate' towards the players.

This struck me as being on a "slippery slope" in terms of the un-intended consequences of giving players this much slack...