Good Here Also
 

Upgrading to a "better" game is okay here, too. All our assignor asks is that we contact him about it. He set up the Arbiter so that it won't accept turnbacks with less than a week's notice--gotta contact him personally. We were plagued with guys flipping games and double-booking before that. Not so common anymore. Those who didn't care to properly take care of business kinda fell by the wayside.

I lived in 6 states in 8 years (before landing here for the last 10) -- trust me, I know what you're talking about. I've always been able to pull myself up in a few years, but it's pretty much always been a struggle to build my schedules up to where I thought they should be. Even now, the state lists me as a 10th year official when it's actually my 25th season.

Two Weeks To A Month Advance Notice ...
 

Back before Arbiter, we used to get our entire season of high school assignments by "snail" mail.

Since we started using Arbiter, we get our high school game assignments about two weeks in advance. We can see the time of "pending" games about a month in advance, but don't know where the game is, or who our partner will be. This allows our high school assigner to figure out which games will need a top notch crew, and make some adjustments throughout the season.

My Catholic middle school assigner also uses Arbiter, and he can "see" my high school game assignments on my high school Arbiter site. He then schedules my Catholic middle school games around my high school assignments, but doesn't post "pending" games, just assigned games.

I've been in two different associations in Georgia. One assignor gave us game till January at the beginning of the year and everything else after that. In my current association games are scheduled two weeks at a time. I liked the half season schedule way more.

I have about a dozen games right now for 2012-13 season right now. All I know at this time is that there will be a game in a particular conference and that later we will get the sites. The time this comes in varies as some games sites will be sent in the Spring and others will go through the summer and fall. But I know who I am working for, just not where exactly I am going at this point. By the time the season starts I will know every game over a month before the season.

Peace

I too am from Maine and we get them a month at a time or maybe even the same week. As a first year official that is something that I am trying to get used to, I do HS softball and we get the schedule for the entire season before it starts so this is a huge change for me.

At this point in time, we are getting our schedule 2 weeks at a time. usually a month at a time, but not this year.

In the past we have gotten an entire season, but that was before Arbiter, 4 or 5 years ago.

The problem with our system is this: I travel for my day job occasionally and I've had to find a fair number of subs the last 10 years. One assignor felt I was too high maintenance because of it (that's passed and I get a *lot* of games now from him after we got to know each other), but like I said -- the day job pays the bills and I don't know when I'll be traveling 1-2 years from now.

We don't have *an assignor* here, so conference commissioners do the assigning. I work for about a dozen assignors and they start very early in assigning -- if they don't the better officials will have already booked and they'll have trouble finding crews on the busier days. Reminds me of how the presidential primaries and caucuses keep getting earlier and earlier.

I'd hate having a central assignor, though. I had that system in Tennessee. When I got promoted to the varsity staff, I was told I could only work varsity games and then some weeks I only got 1 or 2 dates and I couldn't fill in with JV or freshman dates around it. The previous year (before I got promoted) I was at the top of the subvarsity food chain and could work every night if I wanted to. I asked the assignor why it was better for me (I, frankly, needed the money as I was a student) to be forced to pass on subvarsity games and they couldn't understand why I wanted to work those games when I had "a varsity schedule." Some schedule! I finally came to an understanding when they found themselves short officials and eventually worked whatever I wanted.

Here I fill my own schedule -- if I want to be Steve Welmer and work 6 days a week, I just have to hustle and put together my schedule in that way (and have enough assignors and schools (who hire their own non-conference officials) willing to hire me).

I just got my assignments for the rest of the season a few days ago. The chapter I currently belong to assigns a half season at a time.

The previous chapter I belonged to had regional assigners for subvarsity. The assignor for the region I worked in would put his games out a few weeks before the seasons starts and then in mid December. Once those were published, we would go online and request the games we wanted to work.

We get ours 2 or 3 weeks at a time, on Sunday a week before the first game on the schedule.

But we still have to turn in closeouts before the season begins. Just becasue he hasn't sent them to us, doesn't mean he hasn't already assigned them. If he assigns them in Arbiter and then you closeout, whatever is was in the system first is going to win out.


Our assignor is lucky to get schedules from schools two months in advance. No way he could assign that far out, plus the added issue of this being a very transient area with the military aspect.

I guess conference commissioners have more control over scheduling.

Seems like a very valid issue to me. My guess is that these peeved officials have never assigned before.

The conference commissioners make the game schedules AND assign the officials. Clearly, the schools have input on which dates they cannot play, but the fact that one person handles both aspects makes it easier for the commishes to get things done quicker.