For the love of the game?
 

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.

I do work quite a few freebies every year, but artists should be paid to perform their craft.

I was President of the Board of a youth league for quite a few years and I am still on the Board (17 years total now). I never spent anywhere near the time doing that job as I did officiating. Besides, if we didn't pay the refs, we wouldn't get any. Many of ours are HS kids. Part of the reason we use them is to provide them with a decent paying part time job. That's part of our mission, too. Quite a few of our Board members are volunteer coaches, but only two of us ref.

BTW - I do volunteer ref for Special Olympics. There's a difference between a "regular" non-profit and a charity.

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.

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....

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.

Ask him why anyone who "loved the game" would waste their time being around crappy 4th grade games if they weren't being paid? There are a lot better of games to be around or to be watched on TV. Also find out where he ever got the idea that the officials are there for the "love of the game".

Come on LDUB, to do a high school varsity game around here means I leave work at 5PM and get home usually around 10:30. For my 5.5 hr committment I am paid $55 which is $10/hr BEFORE I deduct mileage, uniform, association dues, camps, etc, etc....if someone told me that they would hire me to do pretty much anything else considered work for that arrangement I'd say no thanks....while the money is nice and I wouldn't do as many games as I do if they were all freebies, I think all of us do this at least in part for the love of the game...

Because I have children of my own. They get my time for free.

I can honestly say I wouldn't do this for free. I love the game, and I love kids, and all that blah blah blah. But if I wasn't getting paid, I'd find other ways to volunteer that didn't involve taking verbal abuse as part of the job description.

So you worked from 9-5, then went and worked a side job and made $10/hr while exercising. Sounds better than working 9-5 then working at Wal Mart for 4 hours making $8/hr, then going to the gym, which has fees, for an hour. For someone who wants to make money and exercise sports officiating seems like a better option.

There are guys who officiated some sport and then started officiating volleyball. Some of those guys had more or less never known anything about volleyball. Do you think they decided to officiate volleyball because they loved the game?

It's funny how volleyball takes the punches for being the avenue to make "easy money". :D

I officiate very seldom now, but when I was more active, I officiated for free. (However, they paid me to take the crap that goes with it.)

Great line. I'm going to use it next time somebody complains that we get paid too much :)