Regionalism in Officiating

[icallfouls]

Originally posted by tomegun
Blindzebra, his statements shouldn't surprise anyone since this topic is perfect for his favorite saying/putdown.

I'm sure there are some great officials from Illinois. However, there are also great officials from all over the country which means the state of Illinois does not do things so much better as Rut would want us all to believe. I'm sure he will say something like "...I'm respected by the other officials in my area...blah, blah, blah."

I think that you might be missing JRut's point. My interpretation of what he said is that there are officials out there (could be anywhere) that prefer to give T's rather than take control of a particular situation. Officials that are not confident enough in themselves or do not like to have their calls challenged tend to hide behind T's rather than address specific situations.

I think his point is more along the lines that some referees lose their common sense and issue T's when they cannot deal with the situation in a different way. Alot of officials do not like to be questioned and when they are, they start "whacking" away.

Ask most referees who have regularly worked at the state tournament, or on the college level in your area, and I would bet that most of them will say that game management will take care of alot of these situations. Get into a players ear, tell the coach that it is time to move on, etc. Coaches, players, and assignors would more often prefer this type of approach.

As an example, a few years ago we had an official that was working a JV game where the V coach was in the upper area of the gym, which makes him more of a fan than a coach in this case. The coach was commenting on the officiating. This coach has worked at the D1 level and regularly sends kids from his program to the D1 level as well. This only means that he has seen alot of basketball and has some credibility himself. Anyway, the referee decided to toss the coach rather than asking someone from game management to take care of it. The official told him that he would not be allowed to work the V game later that night. Needless to say, that official got a call from the assignor and had the remainder of his schedule suspended for that year.

I do not know JRut from Adam, and I have disagreed with him in the past, but I believe this is more along the lines of what he meant. If not, I am sure he will expound.

[Edited by icallfouls on Jun 16th, 2005 at 11:53 AM]