No offense taken, Rich. I do make a sincere effort to follow the rules that the NFHS has written. I don't believe that it is a good idea for individual officials to capriciously toss them aside and administer the game however they wish.

As for Adam's thoughts, I know that I have backing. Afterall, AAR is my association president. :)

What's the big deal about putting the ball down?

I did it in my 1st or 2nd JuCo game of the season. Team A was ignoring my partner's 1st & 2nd horn warnings so he looked at me and nodded for me to put the ball down. As soon as the team broke the huddle I hit my whistle and put the ball on the floor. They hustled to the throw-in spot and got the ball in before I reached '5'. Didn't have that problem the rest of the game.

Had a BV where the defensive team (Team B) was late getting out of huddle. As soon as they broke their huddle I hit my whistle and gave ball to A1 for throw-in. Team B ending up committing a shooting foul. While administering the 1st free throw I heard Coach B yelling. I thought he was yelling at me. But he wasn't, he was yelling at one of his players who didn't hustle to get to his man after breaking the huddle.

We need to set the tone for time-outs, not the coaches.

What had me thinking along those lines is that in a rules discussion with my new association, they stressed consensus on a given application. Specifically, they were talking about the delay for free-throw huddles and how tight we were going to run that. Consistency and consensus were the keys, at least to this group.

I do not work with people in just one association or area. It is very hard to work with the same people that feel the same way that I do or the next guy does. I just officiate my game and if I make a call I would hope that we are on the same page. If not, I will not lose any sleep.

Peace

Since its a point of emphasis this year to make sure the timeouts aren't extended, I always mention this if I am the R at the coaches' meetings. Something along the lines of, "Coach, its a point of emphasis this year that the teams are breaking the huddle on the second horn. Please wrap things up at the warning horn."

Also, we always come to the huddles and say "first horn <color>". Most officials stay there holding one finger in the air until the huddle breaks.

The time out mechanic is one rule I wish the NFHS would change. I just think its cleaner for the administering official to stay at the spot of the throw-in. But until they change it, I'll stand at the block or the top of the circle.

Maybe in your area. The guys I work with say "first horn" and then walk away as they are supposed to according to the officials manual on page 45: "The officials should then move toward their proper positions to resume play."

Apparently, we do a lot of things differently than everyone else in Northern Ohio.

I was meaning to ask you about this. I had a buddy work a tourney with some folks from Western CO recently and he noted that the free throw huddle thing was a big deal for them.

Getting into the Rich/Jeff debate, I suppose it depends quite a bit on how things are run in your area. Out here, I get (almost) all of my games from my association and from a single assigner. It should be easy for us to have consensus and consistency within the area that we serve.

But if you work for multiple conferences and belong to many associations and those associations don't have a way of putting any teeth into enforcing how they want things done because they don't control the assigning, then getting consensus would pretty impossible, and therefore to some degree irrelevant.

And if you work in an area where the ADs do all the assigning and crews are independent, I can see how getting consensus/consistency would be a rather informal, but important process.

Different systems; different priorities; different realities.

While we may not keep the single finger flying the whole time, here we're asked here to stay with the huddle and get the teams out at the second horn. I've done it both ways, and this way works better. Besides, it gives me something productive to do while I'm busy being impatient because the coaches need babysitting.

That's funny. We were discussing this in the 2nd meeting of the year, and the concensus seemed to be to leave it alone if the players weren't costing the game any time. If, by the time I have the ball ready to bounce, the players are almost back to their spots; I don't generally do or say anything. I had an AAU game, though, where it was getting out of hand. I just stopped the girls and told them not to huddle. Next time, I saw one of the girls on the block do a high-five motion from her spot to the shooter (neither player left her spot). I smiled and thanked her. :)

You're right about the different priorities. Here, I get all my games from my assignor (unless I want to do city league stuff), so I need to ensure I'm doing things the way they want them done. My first year here, I'm watching and learning. Am I calling too many travels? Am I calling the contact too tight? Too loose? Finally, am I watching the right refs to see how they want things done?

This is not a big deal at all where I live. I have never known anyone to suggest that they need to call a timeout in this manner. Most conference assignors where I live are not drastically different from each other. Really the expectations of the leagues come more from the coaches and administration than the actual assignors themselves. Actually often the top officials work in many conferences and they do not change that drastically because they work for different people if at all. And where I live associations are more about where people live and where they want to attend meetings.

Peace

My assignor has stated in no uncertain terms that he never wants to see us put the ball down. We are to get into to huddles and get them moving.

Also, the area supervisor has us stand at the throw-in spot.

:rolleyes: