And if all the refs would get together and refuse to work more than four games in a day, the organizers and teams would be forced to offer more money in order to attract enough officials to cover the games. Everyone realizes that the organizers are making money with each game that is played, right?
Perhaps he could work four games at $50 each and make the same $200 in half the time. It continually amazes me that officials sell themselves short. The guy doing eight games in a day is not helping, he is hurting his fellow officials. He needs a wake up call. He is opting to take a short term gain, but the sacrifice is a long term loss.

Officials are not going to get together on something like this no matter how you or I feel about this practice. Officiating these games are money grabs for the officials and officials are not going to do them for reasons beyond the money if the money is right. Remember, if someone agrees the terms of the contract, they are willing to do the work. Not many places you are going to make that kind of money in one day guaranteed on a hourly basis. These are not "real" games and not with often the same intensity or even responsibility you would have to take during a real game (uniform, time, rules, pre-game procedures). I have seen people from all walks of life and professions take these games in a similar fashion. Or they hop from one site to another and do the same thing.

I know a lot of people that use officiating these games as a way to pay for things like kids schooling or money for a vacation, if they want to take the time, more power to them. Someone working these games are not hurting me, because I might not take these games in the first place. And if I do, no one is holding a gun to me to make me either way.

Peace

I have some experience trying to organize officials to demand more money from an adult baseball league. A few people told me they thought the pay was quite fair (some of the worst umpires, BTW). Other decided they could pick up more games once the troublemakers went away.

As a group, we eat our own.

You go that right about eating our own.

When I lived in GA from '96 until the end of '99 the going rate for varsity/JV was $35/$27. We tried to get other groups to organize to effect some sort of increase. Of course, one group offered to do games for $30/$25 and that killed the plan.

As for rec ball, forget it. Some guys were paying $10/game at that time. The guy I worked for did $20. I worked four stop-time games on a single night three times and then said no more. I valued my time and, at that moment, my time with my young children too much to be out of the house for 7.5 hours to make $80. Frankly, it also wasn't going to help me become a better official.

Well you sorta make it sound like we are "prostituting" ourselves with these game assignments that are less than NFHS level type of games.

I guess we must realize that each ref has different objectives--both short and long term in terms of developing in this avocation. For some refs, their main goal is just to make movie money, short bill pays money, and/or supplemental living expenses money. For such Refs it is: "hey man, I just baby-sitting these kids keeping them from killing each other out here for 40 minutes". Whereas for others it is: "each time I am out here, I'm focusing on 2 parts of my reffing game to improve upon and I will be self-critical of my performance".

When I worked on Sunday, I did 4 games.

We switched on most fouls. I ran for all 4 games (they were JV boys, so it wasn't as fast as what I usually work).

We started about 20 minutes behind schedule. By the end of our 4th game, we were 10 minutes ahead. 3 minutes pregame and 3 minute halftimes will do that. We also only had one team in 4 games reach the bonus - once.

For me - I had some fun, got some exercise, and made $100. I wasn't looking to improve anything -- I was working 2-person and if I was really looking to use this to improve, I would've brought a third person along with me. I've only worked 6 games since March.

cdfu!

*enjoy your disney vacay with that ref money! Mr. Rich