Do you believe they have a valid case?

They might, unless the conference assigners provide evidence that their decrease in assignments is related to performance issues that are affected by age (call selection becomes worse because the officials are out of position more often. They are out of position more often because they can't run as fast as they used to, and this loss in speed is due to age). For that, the conference assigners would have to provide evaluation reports, play-calling percentages, game film, etc.

A lot depends on the competing "facts" offered by the plaintiffs and defendants. In the pleadings, we see what the plaintiffs allege; the defendants will, of course, offer a contrasting version of the facts, so the central question is whether the reduced schedules resulted from declining abilities or from age discrimination? This is for the jury to determine.

And that issue would only come into play after a threshold determination of the employer/employee/independent contractor question--that is, do the two statutes even apply to the cases at bar? This is a legal issue, for the trial judge to determine.

But the lawsuit is certainly not frivolous, and has merit.

One further point: the law is always trying to catch up with societal and technological changes. The status of officials in amateur sports presents just such a situation, where the law doesn't really fit; in my view, we are a hybrid, somewhere between employee and independent contractor.

My far-flung hope is that some court case or legal action will blow up the current college camp paradigm.

That paradigm has reached down to the HS level, at least in the Philadelphia region. I'm glad I don't need to worry about it: with perhaps one more season in my tired, old body before I retire, I'm now quite satisfied with sub-varsity games at the jv and middle school levels.

I should say that assigning has gotten better over the last several years. I've posted before about a vindictive, all-powerful assigner, and since he died, things have gotten fairer.

Interesting. How would that happen, and what should the replacement system look like?

It'll be a long and drawn-out legal battle for sure.

Not price-gouging officials to give them camp speak and lip service they've already heard 200 times when you're already getting paid well by the conference.

That's what a replacement system would look like.

I would not be upset. But not sure much is going to change unless the NCAA completely takes over. And I heard some interesting things about those camps they had all over the country.

Peace

Would you care to share? When those camps were first mentioned a few years ago, I was curious what would make them any different from your standard D1 camp.

And I agree with Raymond: If this can destroy the camp system, I'm all for it. But if this gets any traction I'm sure the NCAA will settle. Imagine how many full-time hires they'd have to make for every sport.

They might very well do so as the dollar amount in the grand scheme of things is very small. Conversely, this would open the door to other ostracized officials filing similar lawsuits, perhaps even a small class action suit.

So either the NCAA would have to come up with objective analysis now (doubtful they have it), or it may have to eat a small class action suit valued at a couple million bucks while becoming more analytical in their assignment rationales going forward.



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Why would the employees have to be full time? Maybe I'm not understanding your point.

A little off topic, but doesn’t this “hanging on until you croke” thing just epitomize one of the big problems with our avocation?

We have to get younger, folks! Wait, I’m being told....really?....ok, never mind. We might get sued if we try to modernize.



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The system I came up in is that you pay $300-$600/camp so that you may be one of 5-10 out of 60-80 campers to get hired. Sometimes that includes some meals and sleeping accommodations in school dorms, otherwise you also have to come out of pocket for hotel rooms. An overwhelming amount of the time, the instruction you get is not worth $$$ spent if you do not get hired. The camp coordinator (often a college supervisor) also gets paid by the tournament director to provide officials. That money goes into the pockets of supervisor after taking care of hotel/meals for observers and guest speakers. Of course some camps are better than others. And some camps cover all your sleeping accommodations and meals for your camp cost. You have some that charge upwards of $600 and provide zero meal and zero sleeping quarters.

You also have supervisors who will not hire somebody, no matter how good there are, the first time they come to camp.

Every NBA official I've talk to about or heard speak on the subject feels campers should pay no more than a nominal fee to cover certain expenses, if that. They feel the supervisor gets hired by the conference(s) to bring in talent and the cost of the camps should be borne by the supervisor and/or conference(s). Currently, we are basically paying someone to give us a try-out and to cover games they are already getting paid for.

That's before you get hired. After you get hired there are some conferences where you have to pay to go to staff camp annually or you get dropped.

Then you also have conferences where you are required to attend a pre-season clinic ($100-$150) plus hotel, and travel to get there. And if you are a D1 official you also have to pay $200/yearly to Arbiter so you can receive J.D. Collins' emails and videos.

Don't get me started, I could write a book on the subject.

I was told that many of the camps did not have very good competition or were not a very good competition to show people's true abilities. They were working sometimes not even high school varsity level players and certainly not any college-level players. But again this was the first year of it, so maybe that will be worked out if they move forward.

I do not think necessarily full-time officials solve this issue. I am just saying that the camp system I think undermines a true evaluation as some camps are not run to hire people, they are used to make money for the supervisor. I think it would be better if the big conferences got involved and spent money to invite people that could seriously work their level. But that would be a longer view of the role of your staff and that is not in the financial incentive for most conferences even though they make millions and billions of dollars in sports like football and basketball.

Peace

If there are evaluations that say that the older officials are not doing the job as well as they need to to be on staff, fine, but deciding someone is "just too old" is just a bunch of crap.