Adjusting officiating level to pay

[drinkeii]

I'm referring to behaviors like calling nothing other than out of bounds when there is obvious and regular contact that would be construed as a foul in a "regular season" game. I'm referring to looking away from the floor for extended periods of time during transitions, and getting beat up the floor regularly on fast breaks because of lack of effort to get into a good position to view the play. I'm referring to a lack of willingness to call certain things like 5 seconds C.G. or 3 seconds because "I'm not gonna call that at this kind of game".

I'm not referring to slowing down a little because you have to do multiple games (however, I do object to the partner I had, mentioned in a post in another thread, that was a non-qualified official doing 11 games on one day and 10 on the next, all in a row.) - that is expected. But when you slow down so much you're not officiating - you're just walking up and down the court and looking for out of bounds calls - you shoulnd't be doing it. Especially not when you have a partner who is willing to do their job, and willing to try to do it right and to the best of their ability, and likely to get hung out to dry because of it.

As for the comment about no one ever getting sued for letting a game get out of hand, i'm sure that no one has, for simply having that happen. I was referring to, in the original post, where someone gets hurt because of that. People have gotten sued for that. And when a tape of the game is produced by some parent who was videotaping, showing an official chatting with people on the sideline, or walking facing away from the court for more than an extremely short period of time here and there when repositioning, or ignoring obvious contact that could be considered to be dangerous beyond normal play, I would say that it is very likely that the official is going to be held liable. Remember - we live in a society where spilling hot coffee on yourself allows you to get money from the store you bought the hot coffee from, because it was hot.

[Edited by drinkeii on Jul 3rd, 2005 at 01:11 AM]