Coach's surprising comment

[rockyroad]

I have coached football for quite a while now, and will be venturing into coaching basketball in November. I NEVER allow my players or my staff or my parents to use officiating as an excuse. My players hear from me all the time that officials do not win or lose games for us - we do that all on our own. No bad call has ever cost us a game, nor will it ever happen.

So while you may not hear comments like the one Padgett posted, they are stated way more often than many officials believe. Just because you don't hear it on the court doesn't mean that the players don't hear it on a regular basis.

[BillyMac]

Officials are on the court to be the only unbiased arbiters of the game. Officials are not concerned with who wins or loses, but only fairness and safety. Everyone else in that gym cares about winning, and therefore cannot look at the game objectively. Players commit fouls and violations; officials view those infractions, judge the action, and then apply the rules of the game to what they had viewed. The rules then determine the penalty.

[Mark Padgett]

I tell people there are only two (or three) people in the entire gym who don't care who wins - me and my partner(s).

We care about only one thing - that at the end of regulation time, one team has at least one more point than the other team.