With approx. 5 minutes to go in the Southern Illinois vs. Alabama game, Jim Burr is the trail, walking the ballhandler up the court during live ball action. He looks down at his whistle, takes it off, digs into his front right pocket, pulls out another noose, throws it around his neck, and continues on.

1. Did anybody else see this?

2. Do you folks carry an extra whistle on your person during the game?

Yes and yes.

1 - No

2 - Yes

No, damn regional coverage, and No.

1. Yes
2. No

The Fox40 is a very durable whistle, i can't imagine what i'd have to do to break one, but i'm sure that kind of thing doesn't happen in a basketball game. Which leads me to ask this question, what was wrong with the origional whistle??

That mystery may never be solved. I was just stunned to see a switch on live ball action.

Yes and yes. I also use the whistle as a backup for the arrow.

My beloved black CMG bit the dust the other day and I went on reffing like nothing happened.

You use the whistle for the arrow, i did that once, but found it was a pain in the *** to reach into my pocket on every jump ball. I just have an elastic around the wrist that would coincide with the arrow when facing the table.

Occasionally (especially if using an old whistle) you can bite through the plastic and break it.

More often than not, though, any problem with the whistle is with the lanyard or the lanyard clip on the shirt. That's why I carry a noose type lanyard in case my Smitty loop breaks.

If that's the case, i hope they paid him enough to cover the cost of repairing his teeth. ;)

Broken Loop
 

Was working a State tournament game last weekend and had the following happen to me...

About 3 minutes left in the 2nd quarter, I went to report a foul and my whistle/lanyard is now in my hand. Thinking the lanyard just slipped off the loop, I went to put it back on only to find out that the loop is broke. Now, usually I wear a noose style lanyard but I wanted to make sure my partner and I matched so I had not brought one along (I did have any extra whistle/smitty lanyard with me but with a busted loop, this was not going to help either).

Needless to say, I didn't want the lanyard just flapping around when I was running so I took the lanyard off and did strickly the whistle (Just had to remember not to spit the whistle out when making a call). In watching the game tape, you can see me holding the whistle in my hand on dead ball situations in a couple of occasions

At half time, I just switched shirts. Fellow officials sitting in the stands had a good laugh.

Re: Broken Loop
 

Same thing happened to me this year too...albeit not at a state tournament. It was about 2 minutes into the game...Luckily the gym I was working has the officials room about 20 feet from the court...so between 1st and 2nd quarters I hurried and changed...and got back out for the warning horn :D.... don't know if the whistle had anything to do with it, but we had 16 fouls total for the whole game...4A varsity boys (largest wyoming classification)...so maybe I should pack it in my hand more often LOL...

In line with whistle problems, has anyone heard why the Fox 40 was invented?

ref18, being from Steel Town, perhaps you're slightly better to tell this story, but I've heard it quite a few times, having Ron Foxcroft as a guest speaker at various officiating conferences.

Go to fox40whistle.com and click on the Fox 40 Story.

[Edited by JugglingReferee on Mar 19th, 2004 at 08:28 AM]

Wrong answer.

Very wrong. Just remember.