Have any of you ever called...

[tomegun]

Years ago (not sure if I ever posted this), I had a bad experience and didn't handle it as well as Rich.

I was working a military tournament on a base that one of my friends assigned. I'm at the L, I'm watching off ball and two players go down. I was watching them the entire time and call the first foul. To my amazement, another official (I don't remember if he was the T or C) comes in and says the player that I thought got fouled committed the foul. He came in telling me all of this and he didn't have a whistle on the play. This was about 12+ years ago so I wasn't the kindler and gentler Tom you see before you. I told him, "Well if you think that is what happened, go report it". I didn't think in a million years, he would go report the foul since he didn't even have a whistle on the play, but to my utter shock he did. To say I was upset is a huge understatement. I told my friend, who assigned the game and was on the sideline, that we were going to have a problem at halftime. Halftime comes and the locker room explodes as soon as we get in there. I told the guy assigning the game that he was going to have to make a decision: either I was going to finish the game or this other guy was going to finish the game. I know I put him in a bad position and it was a decision I had to make for him...I was showering before the second half of that game started. Not my proudest moment and something it took a while for me to live down. Fortunately, this didn't happen during a high school game.

To make the situation worse, the team that (I think) got fouled was from a base I used to be stationed at...all of them were my friends. They were asking me later what happened on that play. Disclaimer: even though they are my friends, they never got a break from me. Not the way I roll at all.

Also (this is great), I was trying to "court" the other official's daughter at the time; she was a cutie. That stopped abruptly after this incident, not my decision. The other official was in our association and his career flamed out shortly after this incident. It had nothing to do with me and everything to do with his (in) ability to call games.