Camps this Offseason

[JRutledge]

Originally Posted by Raymond

I don't know who's talking about getting rid of camps, at least I know I'm not. I'm talking about getting rid of the exorbitant prices we pay to go to camp, and sometimes to stay on staff

John Adams before he was the NCAA Men's Supervisor, would run camps for literally $50. Adams at the time assigned a D3 league, D2 league and the Horizon League that is now taken over by the B1G. That was his training ground for his hiring. But the reality is that it was well known that John was a rich man outside of officiating. He would run a couple of these camps to get identify people. But to be fair as much as I loved his camps, they were not about teaching or learning anything. It seemed strictly a way to hire officials. He did not go over mechanics. He did not go over expectations other than he would talk about the "Money of D1 Basketball." He would talk about an hour by why he is not going to hire you, when he could hire Ed Hightower or Steve Welmer because if his teams made the NCAA Tournament, they would make close to 2 million dollars at the time for every game they played. And then he talked about how that money went to the other schools and how the Horizon a couple of times had 2 teams in the NCAA Tournament not just one. He went on to state how a call in the middle of the season could influence a team making the tournament in a mid-major and how that related to who would his coaches like to see more than some young kid that has not "name" or recognition to his officiating at that level. He even went on and on about if you were west of this town you probably were not as good of an official, but he would need you because you were closer to his a school in that location. Where if you were east of that same town, you would likely have seen much better ball but you were in competition for fewer slots based on your location and that he could use multiple officials from that area at that time. His conversations about that were by far the best, but again I did not learn about rotations, dealing with coaches or what he made a decision about when hiring someone.

A lot of the campers ended up being D1 officials. A lot of his clinicians went from being lower level D1 guys or D2 officials to go on to work the B1G or other conferences like the B12 Consortium (which was one of the first ones at the D1 level at the time). It was actually amazing experience, but not a one for vast opportunities if you did not have someone in your corner that knew him well. Now when John went on to work as the NCAA Supervisor, different supervisors took over his leagues, and then in some cases there were more opportunities for those in certain areas after he left. But I will always be thankful to John and the experience, but I was already an experienced official when I attended his stuff.

Originally Posted by Raymond

Talked to somebody today who had initially paid $500 to go to a staff camp this spring, but it got postponed For various reasons they have since decided to relocate to another state, which will take them too far away from the conference. The supervisor does not want to give them back their camp fee, for a camp that's still at least two months away. That's the mindset and environment I'm talking about.

And that is wrong if that is the case and not what I would ever defend. That is not about the camp system that is about that supervisor. Many of my assignors that took our money for camps, either would pay us back or even apply it to next year's camp if they those cannot attend the rescheduled event.

Peace