In case you haven't hear...Joey Crawford

[Jurassic Referee]

Originally Posted by Nevadaref

Yep, sure is. I happen to think that both of those make good sense. There is no way that a 21 year-old is ready to control a HS environment.

Damn, I wish that I hadda known that back when I was 21.......and was in my sixth year of doing high school varsity games, in both football and basketball. And I had just became a white hat(Referee) in football too. Worked playoff games in both sports that year too. Geeze, now I find out that I wasn't ready for any of that. Bummer.

I also know guys that started doing T-ball games when they were 12/13 to make a few bucks, kept up with umpiring because they enjoyed it, and by the time that they hit 21 years old they had 8-9-10 years of experience. I'd like to be there, Nevada, when you tell people like that they're not ready to do a high school game.

We have a hard enough time getting and retaining officials in just about all sports. To arbitrarily tell good, solid officials who are both experienced and capable that we can't use them because they are either too young or too old is just simply asinine. To think that you can also set an imaginary date where an official automatically is unable to officiate further because it's the birthday, and instant and complete physical deterioration has set in, is just as asinine.