Appreciate your Assignors
 

I say appreciate your assignors because I am amazed at how busy I am with doing assigning.

This is my 1st year doing it. I assign just JV & some Middle School. We have a Varsity assignor & another Middle School assignor.

I have had nearly 1,000 emails since the beginning of the season ( Dec. 1st ) I have had too many call offs, declines and turn backs to count. In addition I get call offs 3 hrs before game time and have to find officials for a game 40 miles away.

I am not complaining. I signed uop to do this and I love it, but think about what you are putting your assignor through when you call off with short notice. Sometimes it can not be helped. But if you know you can not work a game 2 weeks from now, be kind, tell him today.

I had to turn back a game once this season, as I couldn't get out of working one night, and I didn't know that ahead of time. Thankfully I was able to tell the assignor of that game three weeks ahead of time.

I hated doing it. Especially since I couldn't give him the name of somebody that could do the game for me (we can't just give the game away... the assignor must re-assign the game himself).

Remedies ???
 

Do you use Arbiter, or some other assignment software?

Are there penalties in place for not accepting a game if you don't close out the date in advance?

Are there penalties in place for turnbacks (games already accepted) unless for injury, illness, work related, or family emergency?

Assignors? We dont have no stinkin' assignors!

Our games down here come from individual AD's for the most part, few schools here in my range belong to conferences that have assignors. Not that the AD's here arent pulling their collective hair out at times. We used to have a lot of problems with game jumpers, thats getting better do to the myOHSAA system but somehow people still manage to double book themselves.

Absolutely!
 

We're having another one of "those" seasons where weather and postponements are playing havoc with the schedule. Our Assignor is probably not having a lot of fun. My game tonight was now postponed for the third time. Tough job.

As we have a good many college officials in our HS ranks, being available for re-scheduled games can pay off. I keep my Arbiter schedule up to date and myself available as much as I can - even on the weekends.

I definitely hear you. At our last association meetings, the local assignors are invited to attend and share relevant information (our association doesn't assign games). One of my assignors mentioned that between illness and some season-ending injuries to officials, he had a number of games to reassign. So, I try to make myself available as much as possible without overworking myself in a given week.

Among other duties, I was the assignor for our local kids rec league for about 15 years. The big advantage to this was scheduling for myself the games that were the most convenient and also being able to decide who my partner would be for each game.

I also spent time going to other games in our league to do evals.

At least you're not doing baseball or softball and dealing with rainouts too. :eek:

Our problem is numbers, we have about 50 officials and 7 newbies. We try to keep newbies on MS only, but because of our numbers, they end up with maybe 5 JV & Freshmen games each for the year. Of our 50 officials, 3 do college. 3 or 4 are older and will limit their days. 6 or 7 are college students and are limited. Most members work about 60 dates. Some as many as 83.

It is challenging but fun. It';s much easier if I have 2 or 3 days notice to fill a spot. This past week I have had about 10 turn backs with less than 24 hrs notice.

I train and assign our Church league too. So far I have only worked 1 day of church games. Hoping to keep it that way if I can get officials.

Appreciating the hands that feed you is the least you can do.

We have one assignor that handles 110 or so officials, for middle school, JV, and high school. I always wondered if that number of officials in the norm for one assignor.

Here is what my group has set up.

A $32,000.00 Thank You ...
 

The members of my local IAABO board appreciate our assignment commissioner with a salary of $30,000.00. There are 325 members who pay a set amount each year in dues ($125.00), and a percentage fee (7%) of the money we earn from our game assignments. Our assignment commissioner assigns about 70 high schools (freshman, junior varsity, varsity, girls, boys) and a large number of public middle schools. We also have an assistant commissioner who earns $2,000.00 and assigns high school scrimmages, and Special Olympics Unified Games.

Regarding our Catholic middle school league, our assigner charges the 16 schools $125.00 each ($2,000.00 total) to assign boys, and girls, "varsity", and "junior varsity" games. Each team plays a ten, to twelve, game schedule. We have about 40 officials in our group. No dues, no assignment percentage fees.

It's not an easy job.

I became an assigner in July. 21 schools, I hire officials for 9 varsity sports. I had never been to a track meet or a wrestling match or a high school volleyball match before July.

One way to show appreciation rarely mentioned - make sure all your decisions are supportable by your assigner and assume everything is on video cause it is. I had a coach ejected last week from a game. After the ejection, I sat down and watched the video with the athletic director of the schoo with no preview. In such an instance, I want to be able to point at the conduct of the coach and describe the proper steps taken by the crew before, during, and after the ejection.

Of course we get paid for this. Why wouldn't we?

I realize assignor work is tough, time-consuming, and at times thankless. I admit that I have "declined" games assigned to me due to my own negligence in not updating my arbiter. I recall once that I felt my assignor did penalize me for this by not give me a set of games for a big tournament that I was expecting to work at.

Well earned. It's a hard job, in many cases you have to deal with the aftermath of officials' decisions long after those officials leave the court, and in most cases out of ethical considerations it greatly reduces the number of games you can work yourself. So to anyone who squabbles that the assignor gets a cut, just shut up. :)

On that note, I've seen assignors make their money three different ways:

A) Getting paid directly by the schools or conferences. The official never sees or knows what the transaction is.
B) Taking a flat rate "assignor's fee" from each official at the beginning of the season.
C) Taking a percentage of each game fee an official earns, usually in the 6-10% range.

Any other ways this is done? How is it done in different parts of the country? Just curious...

Around here, the usual way is A.

Not My Cup Of Tea ... ...
 

If anybody does it for free, well, then God bless them. Cherry-picking your own schedule? It's still not worth it with no pay. I wouldn't be an assigner for all the tea in China. When our previous assignment commissioner passed away several years ago, there was a line of guys halfway around the block wanting the job. And that was before Arbiter, when assigning was done with paper, pencil, the United States Postal Service, and lots of phone calls, mostly land line phone calls.

What are the general Qualifications of Basketball Game Assignor?
Is this a standardized system of quals e.g., college degree, certification, minimum years of referee experience, etc..
Anyone know or is it just whomever knows enough athletic directors and such?
Are there any standardized quals for this job?

Man, when I read the amount from Billmac, I was thinking the same thing!! Holy crap, that still blows me away. I realize that I'm from a smaller state than most (or all...) but I was shocked to read that.

Assuming 70 schools x six teams [B&G V/JV/F] x 20 games = about $3.50/game

Teams are unlikely to have 20 home games.

At 10 games, it's $7.00

And of those, how many times do the officials work the Fresh/JV back-to-back? Don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to minimize the work done by the assignors, but 30 grand is a significant chunk of cheddar!

We're Very Fortunate To Have Him ...
 

And he doesn't even have to pay for Arbiter ($2,300). We pay for it through our dues, and fees. And in case anybody misunderstands my post, our assignment commissioner earns every penny that he makes. He's worth $30,000.00. He's a classy guy, he's fair, he sticks up for his officials, and he's out almost every afternoon, and night, evaluating officials, sometimes observing at more than one site on the same day.

I disagree, for that amount of work.

But, it's why some people want to be assigners, and some don't.

Our whole state
 

Freezer, to put in perspective, he is assigning the equivalent of EVERY HS Fresh, JV, and V game in Wyoming, plus some MS. I don't know if I would do it for twice the amount!

And most of us don't know the amount of work that goes into it. I can't imagine all the phone calls, texts, and emails they get every single day.

I don't think you appreciate how much time and effort goes into making sure that there are officials at this many sites. Schedule changes, subs for officials, coordinating weather-related postponements, along with all the other stuff.

I can certainly vouch for the complexities and difficulties of assigning. I'm of the opinion that Billy's assignor is likely underpaid.

Of course, I can help a busy assignor greatly reduce their efforts in many ways. ;)

What's So Hard About That ???
 

We have many members who are not very cooperative when it comes to keeping their Arbiter blocks up to date. You know that you bowl every Wednesday night? Block all Wednesdays. You don't want to work Saturday nights? Block Saturday nights. You have a business, or family, holiday party on a certain date? Block it. You have an early evening doctor's appointment on a certain date? Block it. Planning a three day ski weekend with the family? Block it out. Got a third date with a hot single Mom? Block it out. We also have a few guys that don't check their email every day. Even with various $15.00 fines, this happens all the time. Reasons why I would never want to be an assigner.

I was told that our assignor earns something around $30k for the job. There are around 350 officials in our association and I don't know how many games, but probably in the thousands throughout the season. It's a thankless job - and based on the emails that have been sent out literally begging people to just follow common sense protocols when you have to turn back a game, show up late, keep blocks up-to-date, and just generally handle your business - I would never want to do it.

As I said earlier, I'm not trying to minimize their work or in any way imply they are overpaid, I just didn't realize the compensation was to that level. Not only do you have the initial games to assign, but there's turn backs, game time changes, weather postponements, last minute turnbacks.... AND... I'm assuming most of these assigners also have another non-basketball job they do as well!

# of Cranky phone calls from dissatisfied AD's
x Number of "That Guy" officials in the assigning pool
= Reason I'm grateful someone else is doing the assigning at whatever the cost

I assigned a small Christian School Jr High and HS league several years ago. About 15 teams total. At that time, I did it for no compensation. Being able to choose my assignments and my partners was about the only benefit I got.
And this was in the days before email and Arbiter. I did everything with paper and pencil, through mail and landline phone calls.

Don't want or need those headaches anymore....