We're Definitely Not Over The Rainbow ...
 

Haven't heard anything on high school sports so far for Colorado

Our prominent Juco leagues moved the start of basketball games to around January 21st.

California High School BB moved to March - June this season

They moved the football season to January. So not surprised at all by much of this. But we have dumb people in my part of the country complaining as if someone is doing something to them, while schools cannot decide if they will be able to open in their building. We have dumb people in two of the states I work acting like someone is undermining them not to play as scheduled.

Peace

Coin Toss ...
 

NCAA COVID-19-Related Rule Changes For 2020

The NCAA also announced a few temporary pandemic-related rule changes for football aimed to “help mitigate risk of contamination and enhance a safer return to play for all participants without affecting competitive equity.”

First, the sideline area where football teams are expected to stand has been extended to the 15-yard lines. Ordinarily, teams must stand within the two 25-yard lines.

Another change involves the coin toss. For the 2020-21 season, the coin toss will involve only four people: two officials and one captain from each team. Under ordinary circumstances, the NCAA allowed up to four captains per side, as well as media members or ceremonial captains to be involved in the coin toss.

Is this just spitting on a fire? Aren't there bigger fish to fry?

Or, does every little bit help, no matter how little?

These changes don't seem to suggest that is all that will be done. There could be several administrative stuff that doesn't require a rule change in order to implement.

Pay no attention to that pesky line of scrimmage, or the mass of bodies at the end of each play on top of the ball carrier...it's the heavy breathing during the coin toss that we are concerned about! What a joke...

One thing I haven’t noticed on this thread so far is how the re-arrangement and/or compression of traditional sports season schedules may decrease the amount of available officials (as if there wasn’t a shortage in many places already). On top of those who may choose to sit it out until they’ve eventually been vaccinated, you’ve also got those officials who work multiple sports. For example, some dudes who work both football and baseball will have to make choices they’ve never had to make before.

Same will happen to the pool of basketball officials in some cases. Reverting to two-person will be the obvious solution in many instances and I’m really concerned about a nationwide step backwards in this scenario. Once bankrupt athletic budgets drink the two-person cool-aid, it might take 10-20 years in some places to get back to three-person.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

I've been in discussions along those lines both with my local assignor and some of my RefTown customers.

The points you raise are certainly legit. There are several possibilities with addressing this.

For smaller states or cities on the borders with other states, it may be that those states may run the same sports at different times, unlike the normal seasons. In those areas, you may see a lot of officials cross over to help and/or make some extra money.

Similarly, one that I talked to floated the idea of a bunch of people getting together and renting a AirBnB for a few weeks (and they're cheap right now) and working as mercenaries in other states where the games get played at different times. I haven't done the math, but I suppose it might be viable.

The schools could choose to play the games on days outside of what is normally done....football on Friday, baseball on Thursday, for example, allowing the official to be open for both sports. They'll be busy, but it could help.

We have already spread basketball out over all six playing days available to address the shortage of officials and days with too many games. Losing officials to other sports and not having days available to play games would be very difficult.

There could easily be a reduction in total games for teams, but that is yet to be determined.

On the other end our main assignor said he expects a large influx of officials due to the amount of people in the gig economy that have lost work and hours.

Not really, at least for HS sports. ~70% of the games for HS basketball are on Tue/Fri. There almost never any on Sunday. The other 30% are spread across Mon/Wed/Thur/Sat. This is based on a sampling of not only my local organization but a few other randomly chosen organizations that use RefTown. We could easily absorb more games on the off days....or could give up multi-sport officials on those off days if the other sports were on them.

That would help and may very well be the direction it goes.
I would normally expect that too, but this is different. Again, using actual data from more than one organization around the country, the number of info requests or registrations that are normally seen through the spring and into the summer for basketball organizations are a fraction of what they normally are. Perhaps it is merely delayed and once things settle down, it will pick back up, but, as it stands now, fewer people are signing up than normal.

My juco supervisor has already told me that his schools will not start before January 1st and will be limited to a 22 game regular season.

Except for the one Division 1 conference I may or may not still be a part of, all my other basketball conferences have already stated there will be no sports prior to January 1st. My state is starting HS basketball December 28th.



Sent from my SM-N950U using Tapatalk

The NJCAA has mandated that all Juco winter sports will not start until at least Jan. 1. Your supervisor and the schools in his conference can start anytime after Jan. 1, but cannot start before that date, regardless of what they want/local conditions.

Even if this is the case it may very well be negated by the number of (mostly) older officials who decide to hang it up.

Colorado has already spread games evenly out over the six days available (Sunday no games played) We identify pre season every day that has more then 50 varsity games scheduled and reach out to the schools to adjust.