Football to Basketball Transition

[chymechowder]

I joined my local IAABO board in November. I’ve been reading this forum a lot since then. Very informative and entertaining, thanks!

The trickiest subject to read about is dealing with coaches’ bad behavior. I’m only working youth games and freshman games right now, so it’s not an issue yet for me.

But I’m concerned that my background as a football official (11 years; started college last year) will be something I'll need to “overcome” on the hardcourt.

(I’m a linesman in football. So I’ve always got the coaches right behind me. They can ask for explanations, question calls, yell about calls, throw tantrums about calls, etc. )

Now, I’m certainly not arguing that basketball should be more like football. But for me, I’m conditioned to have a high (ok, stratospheric) threshold for coach complaints. And when I read some of the Technical or no? threads, my first thought is that the described behavior isn’t so bad.

So my question, is: did anyone else here start in football and go through a similar adjustment?

I imagine doing more games and working up to higher levels, learning from the veteran officials will go a long way towards helping with this...But does anyone have any specific "football deprogramming" tips?