Official Book Change

[BillyMac]

Originally Posted by MD Longhorn

If you didn't bother to check the book before the game, you have absolutely no clue as to whether a rule was broken or not.

If the number was changed in the book within the proper "time frame" then I'm going to charge a technical foul, whether, or not, I checked the book before the game.

Around here "checking the book" simply means that there are eleven players warming up, and there are eleven players in the book, that all of them have legal numbers, and that none of them have duplicate numbers. I know of no official who makes sure that a 31 listed in the scorebook corresponds with a 31 uniform number on a player warming up.

If the home (official) scorekeeper tells me that a number in the book was changed, I'm going to ask him when it was changed. If there's a challenge from the offended coach, I might ask to see the rosters that the numbers were copied from, but I don't need to do a pregame "check the book" to do any of that. If the number was changed in the book within the proper "time frame", then I'm going to charge a technical foul.

Just because I screw up by not checking the book doesn't mean that two wrongs will make it right. I am not compounding my first mistake by allowing a second mistake to occur.

Maybe "checking the book" is done differently outside of my little corner here in Connecticut?