I work NCAAW, and the flights are due to the camps being in Colorado, Virginia and Philly (I live just east of STL).

Haha, I'm a groundskeeper at a small college (so I have winters off for the most part), but the way I'm able to do this is the fact that my better half is the breadwinner of the family and fully supports my officiating career. I am a lucky man!

Yes you are. Good for you!

Already spent $1500 and have 5 more camps this month.....

Not married is the key !!!!

Going to Reading?

Yep......team camp here I come.....

Big camp in Philly this weekend.....anybody playing Marie's game.....

And I Thought I Overdo It
 

I have a new hero/role model.
If I could only get rid of this job........

Agreed, but changed it for me.......
 

one can dream......

Wai til the end of the month....Im going to top that !!!!

I don't want to spend that much time away from home the entire year, let alone one summer.

Let's say I wanted to be a cop in a small town. No civil service, the chief hires the cops.

Is it OK for the mayor to:

-- announce he's conducting a "cop camp" and make it clear by words or impressions that if I want the cop job it would be good for me to go to cop camp,

-- charge the people attending cop camp money to work assorted unfilled shifts as a cop without compensation even thought the city budgets for it and collects taxes for it

-- throw some favored off-duty cop a few bucks to 'supervise' with an inherent promise of future favors in return

--keep the money budgeted for the vacant positions for himself.

Now let us say that some of these camps are run by assignors for state associations or public college conferences. Looks crooked as a dog's hind leg. People are making money in exchange for considering people for jobs financed with taxpayer money.

But then, this is a calling in which officials at the highest levels can plead guilty to federal charges for pocketing cash in an airline ticket scam and end calling a world championship game.

In any other business, or in government, demanding cash up front for considering someone for job is a shakedown and it gets you jail time.

This is something Ed T. Rush was hoping to change.

I've spoken recently to a couple of current NBA refs who don't like that system either.

$450 x # of campers......
 

Next camp you go to start doing the math, camps are a necessary evil I guess :confused::confused:

Camps are necessary, but it isn't necessary that they be $450/per for a large number of campers.

If an assignor wanted to have a tryout camp, they could do so by just having a series of games at one of these tournaments where they would personally watch officials work...maybe even pocketing the game fees for their time. They could be selective in who gets spots they don't need to watch 50 people who have no chance of ever getting hired just to find 4-5 people. Applicants could send in a recent game video and the assignor could know from there whether the person had a chance of being qualified or not.

The association I belonged to in Texas puts on a 3-man camp each September. We use the area high school summer league teams...each team pays $150 and they have around 26 teams (host school gets two teams in at no charge and they keep concessions). They have a sign on every court letting everyone know the event is hosted and organized by the officials association and not the schools. Campers pay $175...get a t-shirt, another goodie (bag, pre-game board, etc.), 4 hours of classroom sessions and work 3 or 4 games. They get a DVD of each game and a post game critique as a crew.

Even at those rates, the association CLEARS about ten grand. Gives you some idea what a camp clears that charges $400.