Your Preference
 

What do you guys/gals prefer? The noose, or the traditional Smitty's? Why? I myself use the noose, because it gives me a little more length, and the loop for the Smitty's on my shirt wasn't holding it on. Every time I let my whistle drop out of my mouth, it hit the floor:mad:

I use the noose because its cooler

I prefer to use the noose because it doesn't tug on my shirt when I pick up my whistle to put it in my mouth.

I use the noose as well. Seems sometimes I would inadvertently hit the whistle with my hand after it has come out of my mouth, and then the whistle would do a full-gainer and hit me in the eyebrow, not cool. I would like to get a magnetic breakaway for the noose, so some wiseguy fan can't corral me.

Fox 40 does make a breakaway noose lanyard. Honigs sells it.

If I use a lanyard, I use a noose made by smitty. It stays up real tight and doesn't fall down. Mostly I prefer not to use one at all. Some people don't approve of not using a lanyard. One official accused me of trying to look like an NBA ref. I told him when I was 19 I started officiating BB in the military. Good extra money and it got me out of some crappy details. That's when I saw another ref give thrown to the ground by his lanyard. Never wore one again until the little smitty came out. I just don't like the way they look and tug on my shirt. To each his own.

I prefer the smitty. It's what most the refs around here wear, and I have no desire to stand out at this point. Not that those refs who choose to use a noose or no lanyard at all are doing so to stand out; only that fitting in is enough reason for me to make an otherwise benign decision.

Always the Smitty. No noose is good noose. :p

You can get the smitty's in different lengths.

Huh? If the loop is broken (it's never happened to me) fix it. Otherwise, I don't see how the clip on the end of the smitty can *NOT* hold it on the loop.

I go noose because at one point in my career I had the loop break in the middle of a game rendering my smitty useless. I also like the noose to give my partners the "I'd rather be hanging myself than listening to these idiot fans" mechanic.

Are you sure you're not giving your partners ideas?

I use the smitty for convenience. To aleviate the loop problem I took a ring off one of my old whistles and put it on permanent. The I clip the lanyard to the ring. I also have a spare smitty and a noose in case of emergency in my bag along with spare whistles.

We gotta Rope
We gotta Tree
All we need
is a referee.:D

Nah, one is a cop. He'd probably just shoot me to save himself the time and effort. :D

I use the break-a-way noose that they use in the NCAA or the NBA noose. Depends on which one I grab first!