General Thoughts at Playoff Time
 

I am winding down my 20th+ season, and I am honored to call with some great officials in some great games. As I continue to learn from my personal experiences as well from some established D1 guys, I have come up with some thoughts.

1) When a coach approaches you with a little butt chewing, keep your emotions out of it! I was with a pretty established official, who while after being challenged by a coach on an isolated play, come back to our huddle with the following:
"F-it! Call everything you see! Shut them down! Call it!"

I had to challenge my co-official who was seeing "red" at that point. "Hey Joe, we don't need to mess up a great flow and game by changing our philosophy based on an isolated incident"

It is very easy to "knee-jerk" either our own judgement or the philosophy of the crew based on a personal challenge. Keep emotions out of it.


2) Don't "apologize with your whistle". What I mean by that, don't make 1 missed call into many trying to "make up" for that mistake. Learn from them, be open to positive or negative information from your fellow crew members or established evaluators. As "R"s in our crews, it shouldn't be "our way or the highway" ask your crew for their honest opinion especially when approached by a coach stating such things like "they are killing us in the post" or "they are handchecking us all over the place" etc. Ask for your crew's overall assessment to prevent being overofficious based on an isolated incident.

Hope you all had great seasons,

Jeremy