The most nonsensical tweets ever tweeted?
 

I've lauded Fran Fraschilla on this forum before for having a greater rules knowledge than the average commentator, but here are two of his tweets tonight that make me roll my eyes...


"College officials: You've done too many games this year. You're tired & you're missing calls. Don't hurt game & players b/c fuse is short!"

"Very serious about this: @Big12Conference should mandate all tourney officials take 4-day break before @Big12Conference tourney starts."


Would anyone care to share any empirical evidence that proves college officials are worn out and have gotten "shorter fuses" at this point in the season?

Not empirical but I've done 60 Varsity games since November and I've noticed myself having a shorter fuse and being less focused during Jan and Feb. I can't imagine how those college guys do 80+ D1 games and don't experience similar things.

You and I have similar workloads.

I'm not sure it's a fair comparison.

I'm sure you and I have day jobs and pressures associated with them. Officials working 80+ D1 games are likely not worrying about day jobs during the season, rushing to high schools to make $60 to $80 a game.

I would like to see a cap of 70 college games for any official.
That would be 5 in November, an average of 20 in each of December, January, and Februray, then five more in March. After that they could work the NCAA tourney.

This would also permit some more openings for people moving up.
I don't believe the games themselves wear down the officials as much as the travel at that level does.

"Restriction of trade." They are independent contractors. Make them employees and what you post is reasonable.

What about putting a stipulation in their independent contractor agreement to this effect?
What about the NCAA making a regulation that it will only use officials for the NCAA tournament who work fewer than X number of regular season games?
Seems that there are several ways to enact such without making officials employees.

That is the key word. The terms of any contract can just as easily impose such restrictions as not. The terms of the job can include so many days of rest if they wished.

I forget where I heard it but I remember hearing that John Adams and the ref committee prefer refs who have worked around 70-80 games to work the higher levels in the tournament. Adams is a big proponent of being fit to get into the right position to make the call and believes a lot more than 80 games is detrimental to that fitness.

Losing Focus ...
 

Back in the day, when I was working as many games as possible for the money (mens, recreation, travel, etc.), I always started to lose focus, especially in non high school games, especially boring, lopsided, games, around the second week of February. That stopped when I only started to work scholastic games (high school, and Catholic middle school).

One of the bigger tests in contractor/employee relationships is the individuals ability to accept work from others.

I think it would be possible to institute a cap, but it would have to be done carefully. I think both of your ideas have potential.

I local guy dropped down from the NBA back to NCAA ball this season, and he said that even though he on the road about the same amount of time, college travel is brutal b/c of all the back-to-back games and late night flights. Plus add on that a lot of D1 universities are not necessarily near major airports. So driving to the sites adds on even more travel.

I'll add that I think coaches and players are also "worn down" and have "shorter fuses" at this time of year -- so they're more likely to do things that lead to Ts, especially if the officials also have shorter fuses.

As well as it being crunch time and teams (and officials) are jockeying for postseason slots.

Some coaches jobs are on the line, players careers are ending, etc... Just a stressful time for all before the wear and tear of the season is even taken into account.

We have a time of year that we call the "Dog days" around here, from late January to mid-February. Our season starts in late November and by that time of year, we know who is good and who is bad. Coaches are often very frustrated and conference titles are pretty much decided except for one or two teams or teams that know they will not win so they act out more and you have to communicate more not to give a T.

All this talk about officials working too much is funny, because it is only a handful of guys that are working that kind of schedule anyway. Most guys are working as many varsity games as we work but at the D1 level.

Peace

Not in my great state of South Carolina, where the SCHSL limits each official to two (2) varsity games per week. :D

Maybe ESPN commentators should propose the idea that coaches and players have gotten shorter fuses knowing that many of their seasons have gone down the drain.

Only way the top officials are going to take less games is to pay them more.

I think those are fair comments for a former coach.

Teams often practice less towards the end of the season so that the players will be fresh for the games. It makes sense that officials could benefit by getting extra rest towards the end of the season.

The contract is with Conference A. How can that contract say that an official can't work for Conference B the night before or after?

I assign 20 boys HS teams and 18 girls HS teams -- while I can use whoever I want, how can I even begin to KNOW where someone else is working the other nights of a week?

It's easy, you put it in your contract that if they work for you, then they can't work for any other conference.

Of course, you're going to have to then start withholding taxes, setting up a worker's comp plan, etc. Because you've just made them employees. :D

Quite a few officials would get rid of that conference, then.

Conferences already have the choice of not hiring the guy working 90+ games a season. Then they hire them anyway.

Isn't it all about performance? If a guy has a noticeable drop in production at the end of the season for this reason (or any other reason for that matter) won't this problem take care of itself?

Very easy. The people writing the contracts can have just about any stipulation they want. They can't say the official can't ever work for the other conference without getting into the employer/employee area. But, they could easily say that the contract for Game X begins 36 hours before the game time and can specify what the official is expected to do or not do during the contracted time. They already do that to some degree by requiring arrival at the site a couple hours before the game and arrival in the city by a certain time. There really is no reason additional commitment times couldn't be added.

If not all conferences to it, they might have to offer more pay for the extended contract requirements but most of the big conferences could easily afford that if they really wanted to ensure the officials were not working every day, day after day. Even if they don't pay more and all the big games have the same terms, being able to work only 3-4 $1000-2000+ games a week really isn't a hardship at that level.

Maybe not at the high school level, but, at the D1 level, knowing where others is pretty easy (if someone needed/wanted to know) when pretty much every game is televised somewhere and their are databases out there that track which officials worked where.

Crystal Ball ...
 

Slightly off topic, but my Catholic middle school assigner can "see" our high school games on Arbiter to avoid scheduling conflicts. We allow him to do this by "telling" Arbiter to show him our high school schedule. It doesn't work the other way around, our high school assigner can't see our Catholic middle school assignments. My Catholic middle school assigner has a policy that high school assignments take priority over his middle school assignments.

You control that. There is a sharing option under your profile.

One of the low level college (D2, I think) conferences around here has restricted their football officials from working high school football. We lost a few of our high school guys when that happened.

And this is what it comes down to.

Yes, I remember reading about that. Rocky Mountain Conference, or something like that.

Yep, RMAC.

I think the real problem would be one of collusion. If the conferences somehow got together and decided to individually institute some sort of restrictions on outside activity against their contractors, I'm not sure that would be legal. Is there an anti-trust exemption for college sports?

No, I think any kind of exemption went out the door back in the 80's when college football started making its way to multiple broadcasters.

I was thinking there was no exemption, which means the conferences could get into trouble for colluding. They could easily find any contractual restrictions unenforceable.

Not that they couldn't decide not to hire the guys next year if they violate the contracts this year. But the guys who are getting 90 games a year are getting them for a reason.

One potential avenue would be for the NCAA to simply state anyone who works more than 75 (pick a number, really) NCAA games in a season is ineligible for post-season work. The guys who want to work in the tournament would suddenly police this themselves.

There's a difference for football. I know D1 football guys who aren't allowed to work HS ball cuz Friday is their travel day.

Self Control ...
 

I believe that that's what I said:

This confused me: "It doesn't work the other way around, our high school assigner can't see our Catholic middle school assignments"

United We Stand ...
 

My high school assigner hasn't asked us to change our profile to allow that. My Catholic middle school assigner has a great relationship with my high school assigner, they both know that high school assignments take a higher priority over Catholic middle school assignments, even to the point of getting a last minute high school game a few hours before game time. If you already have a middle school assignment, call the middle school assigner, and go to the high school game.

Since I don't work NCAA games, I have no idea how my high school assigner prevents conflicts with NCAA assignments, however, I do know that he considers NCAA assignments to take a higher priority over high school assignments, in terms of closing out dates, turnbacks (no fines), etc.