Facial Hair

[JRutledge]

Originally posted by zebraman


I would hope these assignors who are worried about facial hair aren't also using factors in their "believability scale" like race, gender, and other factors that are out of an official's control.

Well they are. Officials are hired all the time because of race and gender, or at least that is a major factor to why they are hired. Girl's and Women's Basketball Officials are hired all the time based on gender. Mostly Black Conferences or teams with many mostly Black teams will have mostly or many Black officials. Ever heard of the MEAC or the SWAC. I can almost guarantee that you could probably count on one had the amount of white officials in those conferences.

Define believability for me.

I cannot define it for you, every person has their own definition. You might have worked with a guy or two that is overweight and had no problem. But unfortunately it is not you that has to believe whether an official is believeable or not. The coaches, ADs and yes sometimes the fans have a bigger say in this. If a guy walks out onto a court and weighs 300 pounds, there is not much that guy is going to be able to overcome. He might get every call right, but the first call that a coach does not like, things might get out of hand. Maybe not so much at the HS level, but coaches have a much bigger say as the level gets higher. College coaches send tape complaints all the time. And it is not very uncommon for officials to have to explain calls that they make at the college level. BTW, I am not talking D1 either. That happens at D3 all the time.

This happens all the time in my experience. If you are a certain gender, race or weight, you will get hired more likely than those not fitting a certain discription.