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.

Come on! He's JIM BURR!!! He can do anything he wants!

Re: Broken Loop
 

When this happened to me, I just worked the clip at the end of the lanyard into the stitches at the base of the black neckline fabric. It stayed fine until I could get the thing home, and stitch the loop back into place.

I've haven't had the oppertunity to meet Ron yet, but they showed a video about him in business class, and the Fox 40 story on the website is the same as what he said in this video. I think now he's working as an NBA evaluator, and is looking for a Canadian to be the next NBA official.

Yes, in Toronto and Detroit from what I hear.

He's had quite the officiating career.

If i was done school, i'd probably try for that NBA carreer, but i'm too young now.

Re: Broken Loop
 

Many NBA officials work sans lanyard all the time. Some tuck the whistle in their waistline when it isn't in their mouth. Steve Javie comes to mind.

I saw him earlier in the year on a 10 second count. He indicated on his fingers, where he was in the count. I wondered if that was a new mechanic. When I didn't see anyone else do it, your remark entered my mind.

How do they hook the Precision timing to their whistle if they work without the lanyard??

The NBA version has two mics that clip to the shirt collar, instead of one mic the clips to the lanyard.

That makes sense. So they don't have a mic clipped to there whistle at all when they wear the lanyard??

Interesting - the versions I've worked with had a microphone with a range of less than 2cm. (One ref's mic literally slipped that much and the system wouldn't register the whistle.) My guess is that it still doesn't have a great range, but I'd still be worried about a Fox40 in the stands.

One of my goals, is sometime in my officiating career to work a game using precision timing

Some states allow them for HS regular season and/or state tourney use (NC comes to mind). Of course, a nice ACC or NBA game wouldn't be too bad.

I was watching one crew at the intramural tourney this past weekend, and noticed one official with the PT lanyard. I was shocked, and asked if he used PT - he said he had at the high school level. I was about to get real jealous of his college's intramural program.

None of the high schools in my area have precision timing. And i don't think any of the universities do either.

Although i know they tried it once for a football game in my city's stadium. But i don't think they've been used since that one game.

How'd they adopt it for football? Only thing I can think of is using an "on/off" pushbutton switch instead of whistle control - too many dead ball whistles where the clock stays running in football.

Did he use ASL? Or what? I mean, how did he do 6, 7 etc?

Reference above - he's Jim Burr - he can count to ten however he pleases! :p

The NBA mics are the same, they're one cable but split. I got to see one first hand, they're quite a nice little unit. they split with just enough room to clip it on each side of the color about a 1inch and a half or so from the bottom of the V. Their is a sensitivy control inside the unit that is revealed when opening the battery clip. Naturually its a little high for non-lanyard officials. There is also still a time-keeper who mans the base station incase none of the whistles trigger the device. What I think is cool is that base unit tell you which whistles triggered the devices. So like if you were in a situation where they're was an inadvertant whistle and no one wanted to fess up to it the Referee/Crew Chief could easily goto the base station and see who did it. They're are some high schools that can afford it. One school I was at this year was working on getting a demo unit to see how the district AD liked it.

Ones I've seen have that, too. Is that the whistle recording you were talking about before? Or is there a separate printout/recording of each and every whistle in the entire game.

You can adjust the sensitivity. Also, the NBA model is a little more advanced, i.e. better. That's one reason why the NBA version costs over $16,000 while the HS version costs around $2500.

The backjudge presses the button and keeps the clock running in situations where it shouldn't stop.

You're kidding, right? :rolleyes:

He would start back at 1 for 6, 2 for 7, etc.

He would start back at 1 for 6, 2 for 7, etc.

[/B][/QUOTE]Well, doing it that way, he could <b>never</b> get to 10. :rolleyes:

Well, doing it that way, he could <b>never</b> get to 10. :rolleyes: [/B][/QUOTE]

Isn't that what the shot clock is for? :p

In Canadian football the timing rules are a bit different. THe units were only used in the last 3 minutes of each half where the clock stops on every whistle, the only person who didn't use the precision timing was the referee, because a lot of his whistles are for other things besides stopping the clock. I don't think it was that effective, because i haven't heard of them using it since.

I used it in a H.S. girls varsity game (northern VA)a couple of years ago and it worked fine. We had a mic clipped in the "V" of the shirt. The HS was thinking about installing a scaled-down version, but never did. Only time I have seen it at the HS level.

It just struck me funny. My son didn't speak until he was nearly 3, and he had learned quite a bit of sign language before he started talking. In ASL, you can get clear to 99 on one hand, so I just figured that would be an easy way to do it.