Nothing needs to be fixed. And I do bat many eyes when I see some crews working some games. Old, overweight, old rule knowledge, etc.. But is picking a crew to make a point (this is speculation for arguments sake) that women have made it (3 women on the game) then that's absurd. And I can tell you that women are moved up much faster and are given more opportunity because of their gender. Some are even rushed way ahead of schedule to "balance" things out.

All I want is a system (in anything not just officiating) that is more objective and less subjective. That's my pipe dream.

Jeff, he's saying if you happen the get three black guys or three women on a crew due solely to merit, so be it. But don't go out of the way to make it happen.

I've seen many officials moved up faster than other more deserving officials: somebody's son or daughter; in the right fraternity; went to the same school as someone; being a Freemason; being a realtor when the assignor is a mortgage broker; working in the shipyard; having access to a contract for a rec league; being white; being black.

Women are shut out from the men's side. I can live with the Women's game wanting more female officials. At least it's pretty much in the open on the Women's side and not done in backrooms and in the dark like the above examples.

One would expect that the number of selected officials would, over a small period of time, tend to reflect the makeup of the population of officials within the relative group.

If the number of capable officials were split 50/50 among two demographic sets, you'd expect to see a, over a few years, a roughly 50/50 split among those demographic groups of those actually selected. It may not be exactly 50/50 but anything that skews far from that suggests preferential treatment (aka discrimination). The more it deviates from the expected averages, the more it looks like discrimination. Said more directly, if one gender/race makes up 20% of the group of officials, you'd expect that about 20% of the playoff assignments might be filled by that gender/race.

And it doesn't really matter what the makeup of the players are, they're not competing for the assignments. It is apples and oranges. There may be other reasons to make certain decisions along those lines, but that is a different matter. And if you want to open up that door, you could argue that the players don't reflect the makeup of the overall population so the players should be rebalanced to actually represent the population .

The problem is that when it happens it is automatically questioned by many as being a function of some type of affirmative action. And that thought process is no more just that someone looking at all white male crews and saying "they're only there b/c of the good ole boy system".

On the money in your opinion, misguided in mine.

It's not about getting revenge. It's about giving people, who have historically been denied it, opportunities.

As BNR points out people have ALWAYS advanced on things other than merit. And part of it is human nature to assign/hire people who look like you and you are comfortable with for whatever reason.

So in order to grow the qualified pool of people sometimes the powers that be must take "affirmative action" to begin selecting people who have been, in large part, shut out.

Would that be a big contract or a little one :p

PS. I just used women as an example, please don't infer that I think that's the only group that may get special "equal" treatment.

PPS. I didn't say that the group (women's final crew) was heinous, I started by defending Nevada's sentiment is all. Because in general it's one that I share (in most facets of life that is not just officiating).

At the cost of what?

+1000

The cost is no steeper than the cost of the current system/process (whatever system/process that may be) trying to be adjusted .

At the cost of some people's ideal and self-driven sense of equality.

So you would then agree that equality is just a myth?

So as long as it is your self-driven sense of equality that is being followed, it is ok.

Someone else is just "crying" if their self-driven sense of equality is not being followed and they point that out?

It's not a myth. I say by-and-large it is attainable. The myth is that all factors are created equal. In some places "who you know"/gender/race might get you in the door, but nothing else. In other places it might be what breaks the tie. In some other place it might not be a factor at all.

You question looks similar to my statement: