Clock Operators

[Stat-Man]

Originally Posted by Bad Zebra

You've never operated a clock, have you? The blame lies not with the operator (usually) but with the equipment.

I have to second this. It seems as if every brand or model of scoreboard controller is different. There's definitely not a universal way for starting and stopping the clock.

As my college team's student manager, we participated in a local junior college's summer league one year because our coach knew the junior college's newly-named coach very well. However, they only had a timer for one of the two courts, so I ended up having to run the scoreboard whenever we played on the second court.

Their particular model did not have the usual start/stop switch or buttons. Instead, it had a switch that moved back to its lower position whenever one started or stopped the clock. many times, I thought I had started the clock only to see it not moving or vice versa. (In one of our games, the clock wasn't running for well over a minute before anyone noticed, and we ended up losing that scrimmage on a buzzer-beating layup at the end.)

Having user-friendly equipment, especially at the higher levels, is tantamount. Properly-trained game crew also helps.