What's the big deal ?!

[zebraman]

Originally posted by SMEngmann
I am lucky enough to belong to two associations that actually encourage officials to enhance their game and move up to the next level. I am not a college official, but those who are in my groups are there in large part due to the associations, groups that assign games in such a way to encourage their officials to reach potential and also to encourage officials to go to camps over the summer. The result: the collegiate officials we have are very loyal to the organization and continue to work games and help develop and mentor the next group of official.

I realize the human tendencies toward jealousy and such, but blackballing any official who has worked pro or college games at the HS level I think is a huge mistake. Why should anyone be punished for simply trying to get better? And I also don't get the hostility toward NBA officials from college and particularly HS guys. They are well ahead of everything that happens at the lower level in terms of mechanics, and my experience this summer at Coast to Coast has tremendously improved my ability as an official in the subsequent games that I have worked. At the HS level, particularly for us younger officials, we stand to benefit a ton from the knowledge and experience of college officials, and the experience of working higher level ball in the summer. To blackball people who simply want to improve as officials makes no sense to me.

Our association is very supportive of anyone who has something other than HS basketball in their lives. Whether it's working a college schedule or whatever, our assignor totally works with people's availability to get everyone as many games as possible. As I said, 99% of those who work high levels are a great credit to our association and great mentors to the less experienced officials.

Of course, we also have a couple of buttonheads at that level who try to give a bad name to the rest of them by being stupid. One of our D-1 officials was working with one of our excellent high school officials (who happens to be rated higher than this college official) and the college official pulls a check out of his wallet and says, "wanna see what a D-1 check looks like" and shows him a game check for almost a thousand dollars. What a doinkus.

Z