Is there any way to run a poll on this board?

[Jimgolf]

A few recent threads, including thread 15316, got me to thinking. My pet peeve has always been the inconsistancy of refereeing from jurisdiction to jurisdiction. Since I deal with youth (CYO) basketball, this is understandable, since the refs are no always certified for HS ball, and CYO has its own little rule quirks that not every ref knows about.

However, it seems that there among my more distinguished colleagues on this board that there are three schools of thought regarding NFHS rules - 1) They should be followed to the letter, 2) They should be interpreted according to the referee's experience and training, and 3)They should be interpreted the way the assignor or evaluator wants them to be interpreted. I think it would be interesting to see what percentage of refs subscribe to each of these schools of thought, but I don't see any "Create Poll" options, which some message boards have. Any thoughts? (About a poll, not about the issue. I'm sure there are already threads about this issue in the archives, which I'll search later when I have more time to sift through the threads.)

[SamIAm]

As a daily reader and sporadic poster, I think you would have to post a separate poll for each rule on which you want data.

The bottom line is, There doesn't seem to be anyone that takes one path for all the rules, they seem to pick and choose (or are being told to pick and choose).

[Robmoz]

So then, that would be the fourth option ?

[zebraman]

Jimgolf,

I think the answer to all of your questions is "it depends."

NFHS wants to offer as standard of a product as is possible around the country. For the most part, the officials I work with try to do that. We try to enforce the rules along with spirit and intent. In other words, I don't know any good officials who call a lot of "3-in-the-key" violations because they know the spirit and intent of the rule. The spirit and intent is to keep a player from gaining an advantage by getting a position close the basket and not moving from it (especially a player who has post position or is getting rebounding position). On the other hand, I have a problem with an official who ignores the NFHS rule that says we should call a PC foul if an offensive player blasts a defender who has legal guarding position under the hoop. The intent of that rule is that every player is entitled to a spot on the floor so an official who calls that a block is deciding on their own to use college rules in an NFHS game. To me, that is wrong.

As far as assignor's go... I do not work college ball for an "all powerful" assignor who completely controls my schedule. If I did, I'm sure that I would just do what he/she instructed even if I felt it directly contradicated NCAA rules. Anytime one person has absolute power, it creates an environment where the worker bees know they should just shut up and do what they are told.

Our HS assignor reports to our board and is given assigning guidelines based on a peer-based rating system so his power is limited. Besides, I've been around long enough that I'm not afraid to tell our assignor when he's wrong. I'm tactful so as not to embarrass him, but he hasn't read a rulebook in about 15 years so I have to "straighten him" out a couple times a year so that he doesn't give misinformation to our young refs and screw them up from the get-go.

Z

[Jimgolf]

I did a little research. Although the vBulletin software this site uses has a polling feature, it has apparently been turned off for this forum. IMO this is unfortunate since polls allow a lot of people to respond to a question without taking up the database space that a reply takes, but perhaps there are other considerations that I don't know about.

[cmckenna]

I would be delighted to put one on an site that I host for you. It would obviously have to be a link that would take the users outside of the board though.