Coach Reveals His Stupidity

[Loudwhistle]

What is the dumbest thing you've heard a coach say or do that showed fans they are not quite all there?

I had one this year. BV H1 goes out of bounds holding onto the ball, he lands with both feet about 2feet out of bounds and then slams the ball off V1 who is standing out of bounds. I yell blue, and point. H coach yells across the gym "how can that be? it went off blue last? The crowd laughed and I happened to look up at the fans (something I rarely do, and who do I see looking at me with a smile on their face? My assignor! I only smiled back a tiny bit. I really tried to be stoic, but it was such an obvious blunder by the coach it was very hard to not crack up. Incidently this coach is always harping about something and his credibility went right into the toilet as most of the people saw and heard that he was dead, dead, wrong.

[Adam]

A couple years ago, in another city, during a JV game early in the season, I called a kid for traveling when he caught the ball in the air and proceeded to land directly on his butt.

Coach: "His cheek is his pivot on that."
Me:
Coach: "I'm serious, his butt cheek is his pivot."
Me: "White ball" and hand the ball to white.

Turns out he was a really good coach in another city, took boys and girls teams to the state championships, and had been an official in that city.

[fiasco]

I'm sure you've missed a blatant call that everyone else saw and you didn't.

Do you think it would be fair, in that case, for someone to call you stupid?

How about we allow people to make mistakes?

[jdw3018]

Originally Posted by fiasco

I'm sure you've missed a blatant call that everyone else saw and you didn't.

Do you think it would be fair, in that case, for someone to call you stupid?

How about we allow people to make mistakes?

Yeah, I don't assume "stupidity" or anything like that when a coach disagrees with my judgement. Bias, sure, but not lack of intelligence.

What I do get a kick out of is when a coach makes an argument born out of ignorance of the rules. I've got zero tolerance for that.

[APG]

While working a girls game, 3-person, during a tournament had rebounding action in the paint which eventually ended up with A1 going through B1's back and knocking her to the ground. Me (L) and my partner at C both have a whistle on the play. Ensuing conversation when like this:

Coach A: How's that a foul?
Me: A1 knocked over B1 to get to the ball
Coach A: That's not a foul. You've got to respect the physicality of my players!
Me: Gotcha coach?

[grunewar]

I'll agree with a few others and would list these under "interesting comments." I would hate for coaches to have a forum and list my worst or stupidest calls over the yrs......

That being said, while these aren't this yr, they are two of my favorites:

1) Halftime, B12 Rec League Game.

A Coach comes up and says, "Ref, you gotta watch B5. When he sets his screens, he jumps into the player and hooks his arm and has a tendency to hold."

I said, "I haven't noticed it coach, but I'll keep an eye out."

He says, "Seriously, he does it all the time. I know, I taught him last year when he played for me..... He's crafty about it too."

2) B9/10 game. Late in the first half A1 shoots the ball and misses.

A2 rebounds the ball. Coach yells, "SHOOT! SHOOT!" A2 obliges.....and hits the back of the backboard - coach was so far away he had no perception as to where the player was......

[Welpe]

I had a good one last night. At half-time of one my 7th grade games, I was checking with the scorer just to see if everything was straight when I noticed he didn't have any team fouls marked for one team. I couldn't exactly believe we hadn't called any fouls the first half on that team and asked him about it. "He said, oh we had several but they were all offensive."

After getting him up to speed on team fouls, he told me that he was tracking them in the first game but the home coach came over and said that offensive fouls don't count towards the team total.

Fortunately other than that, the score keeper and clock operator were on top of everything else. Had some difficulties with my partner including him tell me that I couldn't call a shooting foul because the fouled player didn't actually take the shot after a hard foul. After starting to explain to him that I judged she had started her shooting motion when fouled he cut me off with "What are you a mind reader?" I think he thought we shot way too many free throws last night because I had several calls like that throughout the night.

[Raymond]

Originally Posted by fiasco

I'm sure you've missed a blatant call that everyone else saw and you didn't.

Do you think it would be fair, in that case, for someone to call you stupid?

How about we allow people to make mistakes?

It's one thing to make a mistake. It's another thing to YELL that mistake across the gym.

That combination makes it stupid.

[Loudwhistle]

Originally Posted by BadNewsRef

It's one thing to make a mistake. It's another thing to YELL that mistake across the gym.

That combination makes it stupid.

Thanks BNR, that was my point from the beginning! I've had coaches say lots of things that were funny and just plain wrong, but the point of this post was the coach announced it to the whole gym! I'm glad most posters picked up on the spirit of the post.

[Texas Aggie]

Do you think it would be fair, in that case, for someone to call you stupid?

It happens to me every time I hit the floor or field and, no, I couldn't care less about it.

I've made some tremendous blunders that only I, or I and my co-official(s), even knew about.

[Camron Rust]

Not heard by me but reportedly happened to a friend last year...

Coach: Hey Ref! The fouls are 8 - 1!!!!

(Ref Takes a look at the board)

Ref: Yeah coach, in your favor.


Not exactly a coach, but one I heard this year..

One school I work at often has the baseball team practicing in the gym before the game. They hang around for the basketball game and give the refs a fun heckling. At one point, one of them said something like "Hey ref, call it both ways, you'll calling it all against white." Then his buddy piped up and says, "Joe, they've called X fouls on the other team and only Y on us"....First guy goes "Ooops".

[lloybra]

Coach: That was a foul! How can you not call that?! He fell over!!!

Me: Coach, here's what I saw--(cut off by Coach)

Coach: I don't want to know what you saw!

Me: Fine, Coach, I don't want to hear what you saw either.

Coach: (nothing for the rest of the night)