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!

I use a smitty. Because I once had the smitty loop break, I keep a noose with whistle in my jacket pocket....available at least for the first half. However, all the shirts I have now have a much more robust loop than the earlier shirts. I also have 3-4 backups in my bag.

my loop isnt thick enough to hold the smitty's on my shirt... idk if its too stretched out or what... but one day was enough for me

This happen to me too. One game, I forgot my Smitty before the start. I reach in bag to get it and guess what. All eyes was on me. I could not get the clip around the loop, and being that everyone was looking at me, I became nervous which compounded the problem. I eventually got it on but I think I tore up my loop in the process. It still worked but over time it eventually wore down. This little incident got me to using the noose. Just around your neck and away we go. No embarrassing moments struggling to get the little clip, clipped. I got fat oily fingers and sometimes it's a challenge.

Now, the 2nd problem. The loop on this particular shirt eventually wore down and my whistle went a-flyin. Now what we gonna do? Not a damn thing now because I got to finish this game. Having an extra Smitty was no help. This is when I realized how important that little loop was. I mean my whistle was flying all across the floor, I damn near lost it. Okay, I got a foul, where my whistle go. I was chucking that whistle 25 - 30 feet away. Go thru a few players feet and they kick it. What a pain. From then on, I got to have a noose and I keep an extra one for just in case it breaks.

Depending on the shirt, you can also run the noose thru the loop, which looks pretty slick and keeps it in place around the neck.

the only problem i have with the noose is that its hard to get over my head... i ahve a pretty big head, and the noose is just a lil too small. I wear a size 7 1/2 hat, so that noose is pretty tight gettin over my head