Consider this case:

In some NCAA games, one official will come out at 30min. prior to tip-off; thus, jurisdiction starts at that point. He/she then returns to the dressing room until 15min. If a fight breaks out during that interval, how would you deal with it?

Same goes for the situation where the entire crew comes on the floor, then leaves for the dressing room until a set point in time.

Heck - if there's a fight before the game even begins, I'm going to want something stronger than water at halftime.

Jurisdiction starts when the official(s) first come onto the floor before the start of the game. The officials now have continuous jurisdiction until they terminate their jurisdiction, by rule, at the completion of the game. During their jurisdiction, it doesn't matter if they are on the court or not--ex.->halftime--, their jurisdiction still continues.

If a fight breaks out during your jurisdiction but not within your actual vision, you just do the best you can. You can't really deal with something you haven't actually witnessed. I think that about all you can do in that situation is take down the stories of the table crew, game management, etc., and pass them onto the league administration. You can deal with what you actually see, but I really don't think that you want to take drastic action unless you actually knew what really happened.

If I come back out into a situation where the players have been fighting and maybe a coupla fans have gotten into it, I would really think about suspending that game. Not forfeiting it--suspending it and then letting the league deal with it.

In men's NCAA, one official is *supposed* to be on the floor 30 minutes before the scheduled start time. I have never seen an NCAA game (men or women) when the refs were on the court more than 15 minutes before the tip.

Had something like this happen during a high school game a few years ago.

Fourth quarter of the JV game and both teams are outside the locker rooms waiting for the game to end to take the floor. Teams have to use the same entrance for both locker rooms so both teams are there.

Anyway, both teams start a little trash talking..things get going and before you know it, two players are figthing in the hall leading to the locker rooms.

Things get broken up and the athletic directors from both schools are at the game. AD's pull both players from the game and send them home. Visitor had a parent take him home. I think the only involvment the refs had were they were told there was a fight before the game and they might have to watch for some rough play early.

Worked out great for the one team, it was their last guy off the bench that got into a fight with the other teams star player.