to run a basketball team? My answer is an 'infinite' number (yikes...imagine :D), as I had a coach ask me last night (as her 5/6th grade girls were getting walloped by roughly 30 points) "Why do they have three coaches on the bench?"<br><br>Amongst her crying for everything under the sun, she proceeded to pester me with this question. I told her that if Daddy wants to help out the young Misses, I have no problems with it. As long as they aren't inciting riots, hollering at players, and/or disturbing the game, I'm not going to have a problem with it.<br><br>The only rule I could find relating to how many coaches was 10.5.2 stating "The head coach and assistant coach<b>(es)</b> must remain seated....." This leads me to believe that, in theory any way, there could be an infinite amount of coaches on the bench. Can anyone dispute this?

Dan R.,
I do not know of a rule limiting the number of coaches to start a game, although there are those rules that can make them go away by the end of the game.
I have had several teams with two Assistant coaches, who usually turn out to be the Frosh and JV coaches.
mick

Most often finances dictate bench size...
 

However, I am with Mick.

Who cares. Unless the excessive coach(es) are impeding the flow/safety of the game. Attrition, through active use of the "T", can make it tolerable. :D

I am on the board of our local rec league. We have a limit of one head roach, er, I mean coach, and one assistant roach - damn, there I go again - on the bench at games. Two years ago, while doing a 7th grade boys game, I had another dad want to sit on the bench. I told him he couldn't (the rule was made to reduce confusion to the kids as to who, officially, should be telling them what to do). He yelled and screamed and got in my face. I calmly told him that now, not only couldn't he sit on the bench, he couldn't sit, or stand, anywhere in the gym. Plus - I recommended to the rest of the board that he be suspended from attending the next two games. They agreed.

He never asked to sit on the bench in any of my games again. I think the kids were better off because of it.

The best rule of thumb is always - If there is no rule against it, it is legal.

Personally, we have enough to worry about, I do not want to have to count coaches on the bench.

This came up here in OH last year, when we used the "modified" bench rule. Your bench was as along as it took all your bench persons to sit. Basically coaches were "stacking" the bench with people to make it longer (City council people, clergy, etc). There was no rule against it, but once these "extras" started getting rung up and seatbelting the coach, it lessened.

Mark and Brian
 

Good stories!!!
Thanks
mick

One of the HS's in my area had the head coach and six assistants at a game last year. They only had four subs on the bench. They assistants were all well behaved and I really didn't notice them. It was pretty comical to see all those suits on the bench that weren't kids. Bottom line, if they remain seated and the schools program thinks it's benificial and they don't bother me, it's no problem.

It would seem to me, and remember I'm pretty new at this basketball thing, that there were other things that this coach needed to be concerned about, than the number of coaches on the opposing bench.

Assistant coaches.
 

A team could have a coach for every player. The only concern that I have is that I am only going to hear from the Head Coach during the game. If I have an assistant talking to me, it better be a question. Because assistants are like what my Grandmother says about children, "they should be seen and not heard."

Aussie Rules
 

For the competitions that I referee in, team benches are limited to players (up to 10), Head Coach, Assistant Coaches (2), Team Manager and Doctor.

In most of our stadiums, the team bench does not run the length of the court, so I always request the coach to tell me at teh start of the game where his bench ends. This has helped prevent cases of "spectators" getting T's because they are sitting on the bench, but the coach is under the impression that they are not part of his team.