Coverage Areas

[drinkeii]

Originally Posted by tomegun

I just got back from a college game and guess what? Nobody made a call that was right in front of someone else. It was a good game too. The home team was up by 19 at halftime and it went into overtime (It is too early in the season for that). We had a little bit of everything in the game and I finally (it has only been two games, but some would say that is a long time for me ) called my first T in Miss. A kid blocked a shot and wanted to get up in the kid's face. He said, "But I didn't say anything." Yeah, whatever WHACK!

David & Gimlet, many people have put a lot of work into making this 3-man system the best it can be - for right now. After 6 years of MS and JV ball you can't possibly have a good enough handle on this thing to know something better to do. That is what I believe.

And that is the statement made by anyone who is used to a system and refuses to look at possible changes to it for whatever reason.

Just because it is the way we've always done it doesn't make it the right way to do it or the best way to do it or the only way to do it.

I'm not advocating major changes - I'm saying we need to be willing to call (and accept calls) from partners that are outside their arbitrarily defined area of responsibility. As I said, if the mechanics were so important to the integrity of the game, they would include them in the rules, and say "This official has the right to call anything in their area, and nothing outside their area". They define everything else very exactly in the rules, and if it is THAT important, maybe it should be in there. Or maybe, because it isn't that important, or because they feel officials should have the right to call anything anywhere (and I'm not saying you should all the time...but the option is there if necessary), that is what the rules say. Seriously - if it is THAT important that you stay only in your area, have them put it in the rules. Then no one would call outside their area because they're not allowed to.

And don't come back with "Go ahead and call stuff everywhere, see what happens" - that is just a silly response.

I'm curious as to what the outcome of ONE game where no one called outside their area has to do with this discussion?