HS Associations - Training Programs

[BillyMac]

Originally Posted by JRutledge

Situation scared the crap out of all other organizations and many bolted from that organization because of the legal issues.

I believe that our recent AAU situation "scared the crap" out of our local and state IAABO leadership.

The intention of the leadership was to completely take over AAU officiating all over the state, sign a statewide contact with the state AAU leadership, similar to our statewide high school contract with our state interscholastic sports governing body, and turn the AAU game assignment responsibilities over to our local IAABO commissioners. They were planning to accomplish this by prohibiting any member from accepting assignments from a local AAU assigner, with strong penalties in place if anyone chose to accept such assignments. There were also going to be very severe penalties in place if any IAABO member made such assignments as a local AAU assigner. Certainly a strongarm tactic.

Then our local and state IAABO leaders came to the realization that local AAU organizations, as well as local IAABO members with "cozy" agreements, wouldn't go along quietly with these strongarm tactics. Restraint of trade injunctions can be very scary, so the local and state IAABO leadership backed off a little. As I stated in an earlier post, we now have an announced, unwritten policy in place that "discourages" our members from accepting AAU assignments from someone other than our own commissioner. It was announced for the "good of the board", in other words, "be a good board member". However, and this was also announced, there is no local, or state, IAABO policy that prohibits us from accepting such assignments. That certainly is a "giant step" back from what they had intended to do earlier.