Questioning Partner's Call

[Afrosheen]

Originally Posted by MD Longhorn

And herein lies the problem.

If you've been officiating for any length of time at all (and I'm assuming you have - you are also an assignor), you know better. Any sport (perhaps other than football, where this gets relegated to the R). If the coach has a problem with a call, he needs to address it with the official who made the call. If the coach, as you say, asked you to confer, a good official would direct him to the other official. If your partner wants to confer, do so.

If you're going to stop down the game to discuss calls every time a coach asks you to confer with your partner on a call your partner made, you're in for a long long game (and your partner's credibility is toast).

It took less than ten seconds for me to go up to him and ask him a simple question of whether the player gained possession in the front court or the backcourt, and after he answered I left it as that (even as he answered it with disdain) and I then directed the other team to throw in the ball at halfcourt. It's the partner's response and his veiled attempt to pin me down with the rulebook that is at issue here.

Personally, there are many times where I made an incorrect "out-of-bounds" call where my partner came up to me and asked if I saw it go off of 'so-and-so.' I can point to the many times with college and pro officials conferred with one another on a call. So if you're saying that as officials we should confer only when the calling official asks to confer then I would disagree. But I would only do it at rare times during the game where my partner might be kicking the rule, still though with no intention of overruling my partner.

So I guess before going further we must ask the question of how willing you are at maintaining the integrity of the game? If you believe that each individual's primary is solely to be judged by the official responsible then I guess we'll have to disagree on principle and leave it as that which means my followup question of how to approach your partner on certain calls would be moot.