It is also difficult to say two syllable words with a whistle in your mouth. That was the justification for why I did not do that early in my career.

Peace

I guess I'm in the minority here... I work with a lot of people who insist on changing the color to go with a one syllable color, but I think it's disrespectful to the team if you call them by the wrong color... Orange, purple and maroon it is for me!

I always hear an official (usually in a lower level game) say purple and the like and immediately think they're probably not trained all that well.

I will say "orange" because it can easily be done as one syllable. Otherwise, it's blue, red, gold, etc. for me.

Do you talk with the whistle in your mouth? I drop mine out of my mouth to talk (at least I think I do).

Disrespectful? :confused:

Some schools must hate me then b/c I'm color blind. Any team with a dark red/burgandy jersey is black to me.

I was told...
 

...this is one of the easiest ways to spot an inexperienced official.

The disrespect charge is just nonsense. The teams don't care, as long as you call out their color on an OOB call.

Sometimes, "the way it's always done" should be good enough, especially in the absence of a compelling reason for change. Single syllables here, and that includes "gold" for yellow.

I hadn't thought about it as an indicator of experience, but it might fit somewhere below back pedaling in the chart of red flags.

While I don't agree with jeschmit, I can tell you first hand he's not an inexperienced official.

Not true, sir.

Within five miles of me, there are two high schools that wear purple, and one that sometimes wears orange. (I'm sensing 26YearGap is trying to figure those out.) I've been thanked before for saying "purple" and "orange," rather than "blue" and "red." Schools indeed care that you get their color right. It's their color.

Here's a reason. If you're watching Northwestern or Northern Iowa, and tell others, "those uniforms are blue," you'd be dead wrong. Same goes for Tennessee and red. Again, I don't have a problem with spitting out an extra syllable, as long as I'm accurate.

I say "gold" for yellow works. Thankfully, no maroons around here. But purple ain't blue, and orange ain't red.

As an aside, I don't think any high school in our entire state wears brown.

I think arguments for both sides are valid. I don't have a beef with a partner who wants to go "blue" instead of "purple," just so long as we're on the same page. The other night I was halfway through my varsity game when I realized my partner was saying "maroon" and I was saying "red."

Guess we shoulda pregamed that one. :D

Who thanked you? The fans? Coaches? Players? Not that I really care, but I'm not going to change away from the way other guys are doing it around here just to get a couple of thank yous.

And the players always know if they're wearing purple, and I say blue, it's their ball. I've never had anyone complain.

Oh, and we have a brown here locally.

Players. I'm not doing it for the thanks; I'm doing what's right. Besides, we've told our kids, just because others are doing it, doesn't make it right.
I'm merely walking that talk.

And, of course you've never heard someone complain. They've been led to believe that officials are heartless jerks that don't give a damn.

Yeah, I just threw that out there, as I was going through the spectrum. (I know, brown isn't on the spectrum.) Nothing terribly unusual around here, though I overlooked two maroons.

"What's right"? Really? This isn't a moral or ethical choice.

Not during play.

Peace

You lost me here. We do a lot of things that have nothing to do with what the teams say or do. Our terminology is often very different than what players, coaches and fans use.

Really??? They complain about everything else we do. Why would they not complain about this too if it upset them?

Peace