"I'm 52 years old, and in all my years..."

[Nevadaref]

Originally Posted by Jurassic Referee

My perspective is as an assignor who has to find people to cover hundreds of these games on a weekend......

If I told my people that they had to treat each game like a good HS varsity contest while doing multiple games a day, I couldn't find enough people to cover a fraction of the games. You get what you pay for. And if you want to pay typical low rec rates, you're gonna bodies. It just ain't worth it for a lot of officials, especially when you factor in the abuse that you know the officials are going to get.

The people who put on these tournaments do so to make as much money as they can. Typically, they could care less about the quality of the officiating they receive. They just want coverage. And the know-nothing fans and coaches don't have a clue either whether they're getting a good or bad whistle. If every single call doesn't go their way, the officiating is terrible anyway in their minds.

The main reason that any official does these off-season games is M-O-N-E-Y! And that fits right in with the reason these games are being played in the first place. If you want professional officiating, then put on a professional show and pay the appropriate rates. If you want to run a typical AAU off-season run-and-gun tournament, then don't whine about the officiating that you gonna get. It matches the play.

It's nice to have lofty officiating ideals, but there's real life involved too.

JMO.

From my experience, this post by JR is extremely accurate.

[Rich]

Originally Posted by Nevadaref

From my experience, this post by JR is extremely accurate.

Mine too. If they want to pay $20 to $25 for a game and want me to work 4 games, I'm pacing myself. Period. And nobody cares.

[Jurassic Referee]

Originally Posted by RichMSN

Mine too. If they want to pay $20 to $25 for a game and want me to work 4 games, I'm pacing myself. Period. And nobody cares.

From an assignor's standpoint, I'd damnwell better not be getting any complaints about you pacing yourself either. If you can keep the game under control and call it uniformly at both ends, then you've done your job...and done it well also imo.

And with these rec league tournaments, about 98.83% of the time that a game does get out of control, it's NOT the officials' fault anyway.

There's a real world out there.