You'll love this one! I walk into a bank yesterday. Mother of a HS girl player calls me over. Her daughter has been playing HS summer league ball. In their last tournament the mother shouted something at an official from the stands. He turned to her and told her to "shut up!" She asked me, "Can a referee really tell me to shut up?" I smiled and replied, "Yes, but it probably isn't the most professional choice of words on his part." As I walked away I remembered the old adage -- Summer Ball, (or AAU or AYBT) "Set the bar low and keep it there!" Wonder what those games were like?

I completely agree that it isn't professional. The ref was wrong. However, isn't it just so "fanatic" that the mother is more concerned about the refs behavior than the fact that she's up in the stands yelling, quite possibly embarassing her daughter. Ignorance must be such bliss.

Z

Come on Z, don't you know that it's open season on officials for any type of verbal abuse, but don't dare hurt mommy's little feelings!

Dog-gone-it, Refs don't have feelings!
You gotta have thicker skin then that!
We were just messing with you!
I gotta cheer for my team!
Get the call right and I wouldn't have to yell at you so much!
Get in the game ref!
Call it both ways ref!

All the while their kid is hiding their face in embarassment.

I believe her husband's comment after the ref said it was, "I guess this is a learning time for referees, too." He's a decent guy. but I'll bet he'd take great offense if I said something like that in regards to his insurance business!

Reminds me of a story. My wife works with this very nice lady (off the field) who completely loses her mind when she goes to her son's football games. The entire first half, she's yelling ignorance at the football officials every time they have a flag or any kind of whistle. She's so bad that the other parents are turning around to look at her. After quite a bit of this, another whistle goes off. She stands up to yell loudly at the officials, "now what!?" The other parents turn around and tell her, "it's halftime."

Z

At least where I live the football officials tell me that they are far enough away from the stands that they can't hear the comments. O to have a set of ear plugs like the one I used in the Summers when working at a steel mill.

Yeah, her behavior was almost as embarrassing as misspelling "embarrassing" on an international discussion board. You realize this goes on your permanent record. :D

Oohh, score one for Padgett!

Funny, but you seemed to have misspelled "behaviour" :D

(oh boy am I gonna get it...)

The spelling depends on where you live. They're both correct:
http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=behaviour
http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=behavior

I can live with that. I missed a call once too. :D

Z

Hmmm, someone didn't quite get the joke....;)

I'm sorry. I don't officially recognize an alphabet that consists of 52 letters: A, A, B, A, C, A, D, A.........

Ahhh, that's more like it....

Ya' know - I think I'll start correcting the spelling of everyone who misspells "FEEBLE". :p

Oh no, I am used to a "grammar police" and they're not fun after a week:S

Since we're talking about idiiotic parents, its true confessions time.

I was watching, and filming, my son in an AAU tournament last spring. I was on the opposite side of the gym from the stands, because a plug was handy. I was also the only one on that side.

I had actually been quiet throughout the game - seriously - but when one of the refs no-called contact on one end, then called a foul against us on the other end, I opened my big mouth, and hollered something like "same contact, you gotta call it the same". You know, some typical fanboy comment.

If I had been sitting with the rest of the fans it probably wouldn't have been noticed, but because I was by myself, above the action, the trail easily heard me. He turned, looked up at me, and said, "Shut up, or I'm going to throw you out of here."

Well, being the sensitive guy I am, my feelings were hurt. I paused for a moment or two, then replied, "Say, please."

Did I say it was a beautiful Spring afternoon?

That's kinda funny that you got tossed. To a ref to hear call it both was, you're insinuating that he's favoring one team over the other. I wouldn't have even heard your comments but it's still funny.

You DO realize that the country was named because so one could agree on a name. So they decided to pull 3 letters out of the hat...C, eh, N, eh, D, eh.

Hey, CSF.

Its interesting you mention - "fans insinuating favoritism". The first time I heard that thought mentioned here on the board, my first thought was, "wow, I'd never thought of it that way."

I don't know about other coaches/fans, but, rather than think a ref is favoring a team, I see it more as trying to convince the ref that his judgment regarding contact isn't the same.

Please don't take this as a criticism. I've been lurking around the board long enough to know, 99% of the time, maybe more, I'm wrong about rule interpretation and the like.

From my eyes, determining whether contact is a foul is a lot like trying to call balls and strikes the first year kids get to pitch. If you don't loosen your strike zone a little, you'll have a walk-fest. But, if you do loosen your strike zone, then you gotta figure out what YOU'RE gonna consider a strike. Of course, the difference in this analogy and basketball - at least as far as contact goes - is that, in baseball, you have a standard to measure against.

Actually, I do think it's a case of fans thinking we are somehow favoring the other team over theirs. That's the only explanation (in their minds) as to why we clearly missed that call, or so obviously made that call against their team and didn't make the same call against the other team. Now, I'm not saying all fans think that way, or that the ones that do, think that way all the time. But it is in our nature to come up with a good conspiracy theory when we don't fully understand something. There's JFK and the grassy knoll, or the new world order and the silent, black helicopters, right? Well, most fans don't understand the rules (really? :eek: ), so in their mind it COULDN'T BE that their little Johnny or Susie actually committed that foul. It must be because the officials, who do know the game (that's why they get paid so much, right?), somehow are screwing their team. I think most of us, as officials, understand this; that's why we tend to ignore fans. Anything we can do to communicate and educate can help.

Um.....whatinthehell is the difference? :confused: In both cases, you're still accusing the official of favoritism, aren't you?

Don't take this personally, but you're just another typical coach/fan that wants all the calls to go your way. And personally, I'd rather you swore at me than attack and demean my integrity. When you're a coach, that's a hanging offense as far as I'm concerned- with no warning.

Hey, JR.

No offense taken. I tried to explain it in my baseball / kids' strike zone analogy.

Its NOT that I think a ref is thinking, "the coach of that team is a jerk, he's not getting any fouls called for him." Like I said, I can't speak for other people, but I've never thought a ref was trying to screw my team.

My perspective is, "the ref thinks the contact here is different than the contact there. Sure looks the same to me."

Its not questioning someone's integrity, its just a different perspective. And I'll be the first to admit my perspective is the biased one.

When it comes to working games, if I could work from either the bench where the coach is or from the bleachers where the fans are, I could work from the time they open the gym til they close it because fatigue would never set in, although because of the bad angles, I wouldn't get alot of calls right. ;)

I hear ya, man, I hear ya.

Because I film games, I have the luxury of seeing plays over and over. That's another reason I'm a lot quieter than I used to be.