Scrimmages

[JRutledge]

Originally Posted by ilyazhito

On the one hand, I understand why teams pay less for scrimmages (or even nothing) than real games. It's a dress rehearsal for the regular season games they will later play.

On the other hand, it is really annoying how unseriously teams take the officials at scrimmages. They expect the officials to just go along with whatever they want, when it's not that way in the regular season. The thing that really grinds my gears is the non-standard rules many scrimmages are played by. Deleting the score, resetting fouls at the quarters, and in one private school scrimmage I did a few days ago, an automatic bonus situation with 45 seconds left in each period. All this nonsense makes it difficult to figure out what is actually in play and what isn't, not to mention the irregular uniforms making it difficult to identify players. I appreciate working a scrimmage or two to get practice, but not when you're required to do them for free. Maybe offer some incentive (i.e. have the scrimmages serve as an extra training/evaluation opportunity).

Why would you care? This is practice. How they keep score or if they keep score means nothing. The result is not real or even not based on anything but often shows the school and the coaches what they might look like. I had a scrimmage last week where no fans were present and we just blew the whistle. We were done in like 45 minutes. And yes, we got paid. Sign me up for that all day.

BTW, I live in Indiana and they have a set kind of scrimmage format to follow. They play games against other teams, but they have to do certain things like play zone or man to man during certain periods. And even have a format if you shoot free throws or not. The state I guess sets a standard and the schools choose a few options to follow. And we get paid for these. Fans from both schools and everything.

Peace