Football to Basketball Transition

[jTheUmp]

I also started in football, and took up basketball after a few years of doing football exclusively.

The main differences:
Football officials are taught to stay stationary as much as possible, to let the play develop in front of them. Basketball officials are taught to be moving almost continuously, a-la "move to improve".

Football officiating emphasizes slow whistles (spit your whistle out after the snap), and that there's no such thing as a "late flag". In basketball, if you don't whistle that traveling violation or foul within a half-second of it's occurrence, and you're probably going to have to let it go. Accordingly, your whistle is in your mouth almost all the time.



Some things do cross over from football to basketball: dealing with coaches, professional appearance, court/field presence, etc.

On the specifics of dealing with bad coach behavior, I think a lot of the difference has to do with the environment. In football, you're outdoors, 50% of the time the coach isn't going to be right next to you (due to the sideline restrictions), one coach is always going to be on the other side of the field, over 50 yards away, and spectators are well away from the playing area. So it's a lot easier to "not hear" and "ignore" some of the whining/complaining/antics.

In basketball, both coaches are within 50 feet of you almost all game long, you're in an enclosed confines of a gymnasium, and spectators might be as close as 3 feet from the playing area. So there's a lot more coach-official and official-spectator interaction. More potential interaction = less leeway bad behavior.

YMMV, of course.

[JRutledge]

It is pretty simple. Football will help you with your rules knowledge in basketball and basketball you will learn better judgment in football.

The culture is different in basketball. We do not put up with all that crap officials like to in football. For one we are not 50 feet away from stands and everything you say on a basketball court can be much easily heard. I can see how you can say it is not that bad because everyone did not hear him call you out. In football I can say things back and no one will hear me. Not so much in basketball. Even as a football official there is so much I will take. I will draw a line in the sand quickly. Nothing wrong with questions, but they are not going to act like this is the NFL either. That is just me and it works well. HS and even college are a little different. Then again in football we have more time to talk to coaches and basketball we hardly have time to say much of anything unless it is an extended dead ball.

Peace