For the love of the game?

[Adam]

Originally Posted by Man In Blue

I was talking to a youth league president the other night and he asked me this question- "Why do officials need to be paid? Our BOD are all volunteers, our coaches are volunteers, scores, timers, etc are all volunteers, but not officials. If you guys are truly here for the love of the game, why do you insist to be paid?"

I told him the usual, rules study, professionalism, uniform costs, not my charity I give at work, etc. He said all of those thing are given by the other volunteers. He challenged me that being president of the league, he spent as much or more time during the course of the year as I did.

It did make the brown pop go down better but I am back to my trying to understanding the bigger picture grasshopper.

Simple. Tell him to try bringing refs in for free and he'll see what he gets (volunteer parents).

He can't compare volunteers who specifically sign up to help an organization with officials; who are essentially outside venders.

Originally Posted by Snaqwells

Simple. Tell him to try bringing refs in for free and he'll see what he gets (volunteer parents).

He can't compare volunteers who specifically sign up to help an organization with officials; who are essentially outside venders.

Right, plus I have yet to see the "volunteers" break a sweat or injur themselves while performing their duties.

[slow whistle]

Simple supply and demand....there is not a sufficient supply of qualified people who will do this on a regular basis for free to meet the demand...like Snaq said let them try getting people to do it for free and see what they get - in fact I can think of a few cases in my area where they have tried this and quickly started paying people b/c it was maddening....

[Mark Padgett]

Does he also think the school custodians who are there during his games should work for free? Yeah - that'll go over big with the union.