Motivation to do the right thing

[Back In The Saddle]

Originally Posted by tomegun

I would bet money that most of them take their frustration out via ratings - I'm an example of that. The coach I asked is a younger guy, he is in his first year and I've never officiated his team before. I just so happened to be doing game on a day where he was there but not coaching. If all these things wouldn't have aligned, I wouldn't have even asked him.

The issue of coaches rating officials has come up in our state this year. In talking with other officials about it, I learned that we tried something similar a few years back. The experiment went about like you'd expect. The overwhelming majority of the ratings that came in were negative. Assuming that these were largely a result of coaches venting frustration, they changed the policy the following year to require coaches to let 48 hours pass and to view the game film before submitting ratings for officials. The ratings almost completely dried up.

I understand coaches wanting to rate officials. Officials are the one thing in their games that they cannot control. They want to get the "bad" ones out of there. But how do you allow them to have input in a way that does not allow them to abuse the system?