Camps......How many and how much $$$$$
 

Just curious if you are going to camp this summer how many will you be attending and how much $$$$ are you spending ........

Audit This
 

Yes.
6 (one free, two one-day camps).
915.00.

That, along with 2 coronary stents in May for 48,000 should yield a net loss for the coming officiating season. :o

Net Loss ...
 

If it makes you feel any better, just view it as a tax deduction. Plus, it could have been worse, you could have ended up with a pig's heart like Mark Padgett.

Remember reading an earlier posts about the stints.....dont push it bro !!!!!

Belts as gifts
 

BM - any camps in the NE wear long pants, then I could get a shiny belt from you....;);););)

Just like the Mac Daddy himself....
 

BM - look I started a thread and did the majority of the posting....you taught us well.....

• Staff camp as a camper ($$$$/local)
• Staff camp as an observer (free/travel)
• Instructional camp ($$$/travel, but slept at my dad's house)
• Instructional camp (free/local)
• Try-out camp ($$$$/travel)

Already have done 4 of the 5 camps. I will not pay for more than 3 camps a year.

Staff camp was right down the street and instructional was in Philly......correct

This has been my spring and summer.

1. Divison 2 Camp (Paid $290 plus expenses)--April
2. HS exposure camp/clinician (Paid)--Early June weekend
3. HS Association camp (Volunteer)--Mid June weekend
4. HS Association camp (Paid)--Month of June

All camps are over at this point from my schedule.

Peace

A Stint as a Forum Comedian
 

Leaving for last camp of the off-season in three hours. Lone Ranger reruns until then.

Oh, sorry, I just remembered I might have mentioned watching Lone Ranger reruns in a previous post some time ago. Don't want to be guilty of posting the same thing MultipleTimes. :D

Gotta do what you gotta do to get yourself to that "steamed status" as a poster....:D:D:D:D

Let's see, my dad and step-mom live in Glenolden and my job is 1.5 miles from the Boo Williams complex.

Yes, you are correct.

You win a free, autographed B-Mac belt buckle.

IAABO approved camp, this weekend, $200.
($50 deposit, the rest payable upon arrival.)

And once again, I'd like to thank this forum for the encouragement of such camps.

3. Total of about $800. Plus hotels, cause I don't do dorms. :D

• Instructional/exposure HS camp (free)
• College instructional camp (300)
• Instructional/exposure HS/NCAAW camp (30)
• Instructional/exposure HS camp (free)

It was my first year going to camps so I tried to go to as many in my area as possible. A few times I had to choose between camps because two were on the same day/weekend.

There is also a D1 camp 6 miles from my house but it costs 580. I'm probably not going to that one :P

I question any camp that costs that much, at any level. It may have good instruction but someone is making very good money on it. There are going to other very good camps that you can learn just as much at for 1/2 that or less.

I spent too much
 

5 camps

tryout camp (150) in May
exposure camp (200) in June
tryout camp (175) in June
exposure camp (425) in July
exposure camp (495) in July

The June tryout camp and July exposure camps I had to rent a car and get a hotel.

Luckily, I was able to find another referee to share a room with, so the costs of hotel and car were halved.

I already told wife, this summer will not be repeated. I'm thinking 3-4 camps from now on.:D

Sounds like either a Curtis Shaw or Mike Wood camp. Above my means. Not to mention folks who have to fly in, rent a car, and get a room.

In the summer of '11, I attended 7 camps and spent over $1200 on just the camp fees. Two of the assignors I worked for, the other 5 were tryout camps. I realized that year that 7 was far too many as I was seeing the same clinicians at multiple camps.

In 2012, I attended 5 camps ... 3 for conferences in which I worked, 2 for tryouts. Still some repetition as far as clinicians, but much better than 2011.

This summer, I've cut back to 3 camps ... all for assignors for whom I work. One camp did have the bonus of having a different NAIA conference assignor working as a clinician and I think I have a very good chance to get games from him, but that was not my reason for going.

Long story short, this summer it's 3 camps with camp fees totaling $410.

For Me And My Gal ...
 

It's not shiny, it's just black. I would look ridiculous, and unprofessional, wearing a shiny, black belt. Real basketball officials do not wear shiny, black belts. They wear black belts.

I'm What You Call An Expert ...
 

Don't get too sassy, and puffed up, about it. I'm the Forum "king" of self-posting, as well as self-answering. Nobody does it better than me. Nobody. And be careful while attempting this. You can easily get hurt. You're just an amateur. Self-posting should be left to the professionals, like me.

Hi Yo Silver, Away ...
 

I can't wait for the movie to come out in a few weeks. As a big fan of the 1950's television series, I'm afraid that I'll be disappointed in the movie, but I'm still going on the first night.

http://tizona.files.wordpress.com/20...anger_code.jpg

This Court Ain't Big Enough For The Both Of Us ...
 

Here's my favorite belt buckle:

http://ts1.mm.bing.net/th?id=H.46269...79568&pid=15.1

Whenever I wear this buckle with my black belt, I never have game management problems with coaches. Don't know why, but I never do.

Yeah, I Admit It, I'm A Big Fan, A Really Big Fan ...
 

Also, for your information (hey, it's the off season):

The Lone Ranger is never seen without his mask or a disguise.
With emphasis on logic, The Lone Ranger is never captured or held for any length of time by lawmen, avoiding his being unmasked.
The Lone Ranger always uses perfect grammar and precise speech completely devoid of slang and colloquial phrases, at all times.
When he has to use guns, The Lone Ranger never shoots to kill, but rather only to disarm his opponent as painlessly as possible.
Logically, too, The Lone Ranger never wins against hopeless odds; i.e., he is never seen escaping from a barrage of bullets merely by riding into the horizon.
Even though The Lone Ranger offers his aid to individuals or small groups, the ultimate objective of his story never fails to imply that their benefit is only a by-product of a greater achievement—the development of the west or our country. His adversaries are usually groups whose power is such that large areas are at stake.
Adversaries are never other than American to avoid criticism from minority groups.
Names of unsympathetic characters are carefully chosen, never consisting of two names if it can be avoided, to avoid even further vicarious association—more often than not, a single nickname is selected.
The Lone Ranger never drinks or smokes, and saloon scenes are usually interpreted as cafes, with waiters and food instead of bartenders and liquor.
Criminals are never shown in enviable positions of wealth or power, and they never appear as successful or glamorous.
The Lone Ranger uses only silver bullets, to remind himself that life, too, is precious and, like his silver bullets, not to be wasted or thrown away.

<iframe width="560" height="315" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/KFabfnfhIaY" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

I doubt this is an instruction camp. I imagine it costs so much because you are trying to get picked up by D1 conferences, probably has fewer than 30 campers, and the clinicians are paid. The guy in charge may make a lot, but probably less than you think.

All D1 clinicians are paid. And don't forget the tournament pays the supervisor for filling each officiating slot.

If are charging that much, they're making a lot of money.

And an instruction camp should cost more than a try-out camp. It takes more people to run. Try-out camps could be free with the assignor making all the money off the game fees that the tourney pays them.

Lets go through the numbers...

Camper pays $500 to work 5 games (could be 1-2 more or less but that is a common amount and it makes the math easy). That is $100 per game PER official.

The tournament host also pays $60-100 per game for the officials....maybe even more in some areas.

So, per game, for a 3-person game, there is about $400 going into the pot. Exactly how much of that do you think the camp organizer is paying the observer for each game? $100, maybe $150....for 4-6 games in a day. Even if it is $200/game, there is still another $200/game going to the organizer.

The size of the camp isn't really a big factor...more campers, more clinicians. Those cost should scale linearly. In fact, most of the costs should scale with the number of campers.

Sure, there are some other fixed expenses but don't believe for one second that someone isn't making good money on a $500/camper camp. I've been to plenty of camps (with several D1 and D2 officials as clinicians, and D2 and D3 assignors) and none of them cost anywhere near that...and some even included lodging and food for less than that.

The same goes for the local official's association camps. They pay the clinicians there too to work those games and use the money the officials would be paid for those clinicians to sit there all day and evaluate those that paid to attend camps. As well as insurance or other expenses the camp has to deal with like food or water or even in some cases hotels.

Peace

Our local association charges about $60 per camper and we don't pay the clinicians anything -- it's volunteer work for us. Football and basketball. And I'm willing to be our campers learn more than they would in some camps. Of course they can't come to our camp and *try out* for anything...

I look at it like this. If I am going to sit there all day from 9:00am to 9:00pm, I think you should get paid. And when I am doing that 2 days in a row and I could be doing a lot of other things for money. Even the camp that I volunteered at last weekend the assignor made sure we did not stay there all day and worked games in the same tournament in between the times we were there. But no one else does it that way and pays their clinicians as they should. There is a league that I am involved in that we ran as a camp through an association and it was 3 days a week and we used clinicians who were not around the corner to cover courts and give instruction. Of course those people should get paid IMO.

Also most camps are run by assignors who ask officials with no other ties to the assignor and those assignors ask those people to show up and make their camp worth it to campers. So the assignor could take home all the money, but you are paying for people's time as much as their knowledge. And when many of the guys are D1, college and state finals officials why not pay them? And our camps are also for clinic credit which goes to post season consideration and now promotion consideration. If you make it volunteer you might not get the staff to work.

Peace

Freddy -

My bad....when I said don't push it, I was regarding your health.....wasn't trying
be the posting police or accusing of going Billy Mac.....BM is the only one who is allowed to start a thread then answer it with multiple posts.....:D:D:D:D

Get-Um Up, Scout ...
 

Wrong. I am not the only one allowed to do it. I'm the only one who is really good at doing it.

Mirror, Mirror, On The Wall ...
 

Agree 100%. You are indeed, really good at answering your own posts. And, I might mention, you are also quite handsome, and very intelligent. Maybe, someday, we could work a game together? Coffee after the game? Drinks? Dinner and a movie?

Hmm, let me look...

April - $225 (flight, room and rental as well)
May - $300 (room as well)
June - $400 (flight, room and rental)
June - $50
July - $225 (flight room and rental)
July - $400 (room)
August - $100

7 camps total, $1700 in camp fees. I don't even want to add up the flights, rooms and rentals.

Still wouldn't change this summer as I've learned a TON already, and I still have three more camps to go!

Knock it off, already.

Thank you. Come back to see new activity on a thread I'm following and find 4-5 self-answering posts from B-Mac.

Exactly what did you have to rent on top of your room? Whistles? Shoes?

Rental car

Duh...now it makes sense. :D

or a female companion:eek:

too bad those camps are not going to have the assignors for the Big Ten, MAC, Summit, Big 12, Ohio Valley.......and the list goes on and on.

The point remains, you're paying money for access only and they're making very good money. You're not paying for the instruction. How many jobs do you know of do you have to pay for the interview?

And a good number of people going to those camps are never going to get picked up by any of those assignors, ever. For most, they can get all the same benefit for 1/2 the price.

If it makes you fell good to tell your buddies you paid to meet the Big Ten assignor and paid him a lot of money to watch you work a game, then have fun with that.

I attended a camp last year for $200 plus split hotel room in which a D2 supervisor and a 3-conference D1 supervisor were there for the entire camp.

I attended a camp this year for free which had 3 NBA officials as observers.

Dang. May I ask what level you work? And why so many flights?

AND, what's your day job?!

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.

Until they make officials employees and start paying the other benefits, it is going to stay this way. The NCAA and the schools are not going to be willing to put all of this money into officiating program without a fight. It may change, but not anytime soon.

Peace

Cam,

I agree with you 100%. That is kinda what the outgoing supervisor of the MAAC does... He charges $75 to work two AAU games. He brings in roughly 75 guys
and hires 3 or 4. Have gone several times.....have no issues on how he operates.....

I got to hear a little about the "game" from an official who used to be in her conference. The official said the nonsense was enough to make her leave. She wanted to jump before she got pushed.


The only way I even come close to justifying that kind of cost is if you're sleeping at a college for more than two days and even then I'm iffy about it. The Big East used to hold its women's camp at three schools (American, Catholic and Univ. of Maryland) with officials staying in dorms at American and managed to keep the cost in the low 200s. Of course I don't know whether the conference subsidized some of the cost but it definitely made it easier on the wallet.

Money is paid to officials; you don't need "other benefits" for it to be publicly funded pay for work performed for a public entity and you can't shake people down for cash if they are seeking to perform public work for pay -- whether as an employee, a supplier or an independent contractor. If the 1099 has the name of a government agency on it, taking money for getting a person in a position to receive that compensation, with or without benefits, is a shakedown and a kickback. If the 1099 has the name of an athletic association on it, and that association charges public institutions for the service of providing officials, it's a shakedown and a kickback.

Yup... Played the game. I worked 13 games in 4 days. Not too bad of a camp. There were classroom sessions with former coaches one day, Dee Kanter another day and Debbie Williamson on the third day.

I got some information on the rules changes from Debbie in her classroom session that I'll post in the appropriate thread.

Way too many games to work in a camp, IMO. Especially if it is a camp used for getting hired by a college supervisor. By the time you've worked your 3rd game it's already known by the powers that be whether or not you are a truly viable candidate.

And that in a nutshell, is the real rip-off of college "exposure" camps. The CAMPER pays for the privilege to work 2-3 times as many games as needed. All the while the "clinician" is making huge bucks off of campers who stand absolutely no chance of getting picked up. The NCAA operates like a monopoly, but the individual conferences that endorse or tolerate this camp structure are just as bad. I don't know what alternative there is...but I know there has to be a better way.

Just a thought...what about the clinician must create attendance standards, the conference for whom "clinician" works must approve the list of campers and a camper can only attend the camp three times. If the clinician cannot determine if they are qualified to work games for that conference in three years two things are probably true; the camper is not ready and the clinician is either a bad judge of talent or just in it for the money

There were "rumors" back when about an assignor in this area. You had to attend at least 4 of his camps before he would seriously consider you and if you worked more than 3 games you were just a "camp body" to cover games. Don't know if they were true but I heard them several times for different people.

Battery Operated.....

The problem with your argument is 90% of all camps identify themselves as teaching camps.....although most everybody at a camp at the D 1 and 2 level is going there to "try out".....

If anyone goes to a camp run by a D1 super more than three times, then it is on that individual.....

My camp season is over. And I allowed Multi Sport to carry me through my last camp game of the year. :D

Let's take a look. 30 campers at $580 a pop. ($17,400)
Say each campers works 5 games, that's 150 slots (50 games) * $25 paid by the tournament director ($3750).

Say supervisor pays 10 observers $750 to show up ($7500).
Estimate 2 nights of lodging for camp staff ($3000).
Estimate food costs for pizza and beers ($1000)

That's $21,150 coming in and $11,500 going out. For a net profit of $9,650.

That's for a small camp. I've worked camps that charged $450 for 75 campers who've covered about 100 games. Do the math on that.

Yes, but they don't know that.

Denial ain't just a river in Egypt.

Downgrading first class tickets to coach, keeping the cash, but not declaring it as "income" is hardly a "scam". GMAFB.

This is a good point—and I don't think it even rises to the level of the NCAA. Many conferences are probably willing to fund officiating camps, but have their legal team advising them against it.

When you start training people that work for you that is one step across the line from contractor to employee—contractors are supposed to already be trained, at their own expense. I don't think any conferences are interested in having officials become employees—at least I have never heard any conference office personnel say it was a good idea!

The number of campers are probably closers to 50-60 unless attendance is way down since 2-3 years ago.

Not sure about number of games—it varies from tournament to tournament. The more campers, the better—because the games will be worked regardless of the number of officials on hand!

Pay for the observers seems high—but I am not sure.

Also, I would bet that they get at least some of the rooms free from the hotel for having the officials book there.

They are definitely money makers, but that doesn't mean that they are not also worthwhile. They provide a lot of value and certainly provide the only opportunity at present to get hired into D1 leagues.

I agree that the current system is not the best, but it will take one conference taking the lead and making big changes before anyone else does. Plus, the other conferences would have to see some advantage of making the change.

I could see some of the consortiums hiring officials as employees and limiting those officials to only working their games, limiting the number of games per week, etc. Much different ballgame with employees vs contractors, so I'm not sure that will happen anytime soon—but if it does, I would bet it would be in one of the consortiums with 3+ conferences, rather than a single conference.

Has anyone heard from any supervisors regarding getting picked up........

In my experience that is 100% supervisor dependent. I've gotten picked up a week after camp (like I did this year) or waited until a week before the season. Some supervisors are just more proactive about hiring than others

-Josh

or getting fired. :eek:

I know that in one conference I work in that new hires have already been notified.