Assignments
 

Do you receive your entire schedule of assigments at the start of the season, except for add ons..etc?

or Do you get them only once a month at the start of the month?

Some guys in my area are peeved at Assignor for "Holding games back"

Thanks!

Gotta save the good games for the boys :D

We get our entire schedule prior to the season.

Seems like every area is different. Here in SE Kansas, I get 90% of what one assignor has for me 8-9 months before season starts. My other assignor gives what he has for me a few weeks before season starts.

As you said, I get called to fill in a number of times during the season.

What's Done Around Here
 

Around here across the lake from Rut all our assignments are issued prior to the beginning of the year, and then added games and officials' drops come along whenever they occur. In one conference, select officials are issued to a date on which they can expect to work, but the assignor reserves the teams involved so as to be able to send the uber-qualified guys in on the conference deciding contests.
State tournament assignments are issued about three weeks or so prior to the dates.

It's different for each of the different assignors I use. One of them is starting to schedule now for next year, most wait until a few months before season starts and one :eek: waits until the week before.

[ one :eek: waits until the week before.[/QUOTE]

Thats the method that Peeves our guys...The assignor claims it creates double work for him to issue shcedules more than 4 weeks in advance beacuse of changes by the schools and changes by the officials assigned.:mad:

Changes by the schools aren't much of a problem here. What grinds our assignor's gizzard is when guys dump previously accepted games for a non-work or non-health related or non-good reason. If it becomes known you dumped a game in order to upgrade to another--that's pretty much grounds for getting the rest of your games taken away or none scheduled next year.
He's generally quite understanding, but if one tries to leave him out to dry . . .

I already have 40+ varsity high school games scheduled for 2012-13.

Wisconsin is a strange, strange place.

In our Association, our assignor has no problems with us upgrading to a higher level game if available. But we only do so when we find our own replacement. Around here, pretty easy to find someone to cover.

One month at a time around here which is fine with me. I would hate having to close out dates more than a month in advance.

My last Scholastic Assignor would give games out a week/maybe a few days ahead for us "lessor officials." Don't know what they do for the more senior guys, but they were probably treated better.

New Scholastic Assignor has given me games 30-60 games in advance which is very nice, when you're used to the other. Plus, it helps me plug rec games in when I can.

One of our Rec Assignors uses the "Self-Assign" feature in Arbiter and has all of his games for the entire season "assigned" literally an hr or so after posting them as available....... Good to be him! :)

It's typically a month or so here, notwithstanding any last-minute necessary changes (weather, etc.). Due to my work schedule, if I get two afternoon assignments in a week, I block the rest of the week.

We have crews here and crew chiefs assign games. I have sent out assignments up to mid January for my crew. That is acceptable in Southern Nevada. It is a blessing and a curse to assign my crew. There are officials I want to give a shot, but we are a deep crew. Nobody is guaranteed to always work boys varsity because there are too many officials on my crew that are capable - even if we have two sites on a given night.

I am proud of the fact that Southern Nevada is a place that will not hold good officials back. If you can work and you move in from another area, you will work period. If you start out and you have "it" you will work the appropriate games period. After moving around during my Air Force career I view this differently than some places do. I HATE the sense of entitlement that some officials have. What is the difference between a not so good second year official and a not so good 12 year official? 10 years, 10 hard-headed years, and that is it. Sorry if I went on a tangent with my answer.

We get our assignemts two weeks in advance they come out on Sundays - Christmas Day I received my assignments for the week of Jan 11th.

All college conferences I have worked for assign all games in advance of the season as there is a hierarchy amongst assignors and officials. Officials should fairly be able to accept the highest level game offered. The exception is turnbacks, added games or injured officials. These games get reassigned as needed.

High School is different. I have seen smaller conferences assign in advance, but the largers associations, this just isn't possible with the amount of games assigned.

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.