Playoffs/Championships

[jimbulger1]

How are your local Section Playoff/Championship crews decided

One guy controls all the assignments for our sectional playoffs

Crews are assigned in 1st and second round
all-star method Semi and final round

We have 6 differnt associations in W pa here and it seems as though one association gets all the semi and Finals assignments regardless of rating


We got a first and second round game and in our second round game was evaluated by an NFL official (he does this every year as do 2 others from the pittsburgh area) and got great marks

I was sure 2 or three of us would get an assignment...but i saw the same guys on the field

is every stae this political and how do you move up without jumping ship from an association that gave you a shot

[Axe Man]

Sorry about the political stuff you have run into in your area. Move to Indiana. We have this great system called "ratings by coaches." We were given a sheet at our rules interp meeting this year that describes how they do the selections for each round. When they sent out the assignments, they used a system different than what they told us. If you have a good soution to our sytem, I'll solve yours. Good luck in the future.

[jjb]

jimbulger - In E pa the political stuff is the same. I'm not even sure how playoffs are assigned but it seems most of the games go to a certain chapter. What hurts most is seeing some of the guys working with terrible mechanics . It's bad enough when calls are wrong and flags need to be waved off, but bad mechanics are not honest mistakes. If someone's mechanics are bad in a playoff game, how do you think they were in the regular season ? I enjoy officiating enough to overlook the political stuff .

[ump76]

In my area it is very political. One man decides all crews. If he likes you your in, if he doesn't your out. And a lot of the times the best officials in the association are sitting at the house watching the guys that are "in" do an average job at best.

[jimbulger1]

i also enjoy it enough to overlook but i know that i would do at least as good (if not better) than the guys i see


just frustrating thats all

[jjb]

I'm frustrated too but there is really nothing you can do except do the best job at every opportunity. I had a late start in officiating which doesn't help . The older guys pretty much ignore me , the younger guys think I'm an older guy. In my chapter lots of officials believe the longer you officiate the better you are. The PA governing body -PIAA- should force some type of Relative Assessment by all participating Athletic Directors. Raise the dues a little to pay for it. It wouldn't be perfect but hardcopy evidence of your ability would become available.

[JugglingReferee]

Ontario is divided into 5 regions. Each region has a Bowl game that is declared an official provincial champion. These Bowl games are considered very lucrative assignments. Each region has a number of sections. Each section has a number of counties.

In the county I officiate in, there will be a 6-, 7-, or 8-game regular season sked, with either a 2- or 3-game playoff sked to declare a champion. (Actually I officiate in 2 counties - both counties use my association for officials.) The other two counties in my section use other officiating boards.

So each county declares a champ. In my section, there must be a 2-game sked to determine the sectional champ as there are 4 counties. Another 4 counties further west will determine a sectional champ as well. These two sectional champs will play in the Western Bowl this Sunday. The Western Bowl is the crown of the Western Region.

The Western Bowl and the Western Bowl semis are assigned by the Western Director, who is an executive member of the provincial officials' association. He may consider the input of the executive of the officials' associations in his region, but his decision is final.

The Western Bowl quarters use neutral crews: 3 officials from each association that has a team in that game. (Eg. PJ vs. Ross = 3 refs from the association that services PJ in the regular season and 3 refs from the association that services Ross in the regular season.)

The county playoffs and regular season are, obviously, all assigned by the local association.

Coaches have no say whatsoever about who officiates what. AD have no say. Only the Assignor, sometimes at the direction of the executive, assign games.

Comments?

[jimbulger1]

looks like they do somethings right in canada after all even if they have those silly singles

jjb where you from in PA and what chapter

[jjb]

I'm from Northeastern PA .
I would love to see a rating system that gets around the leagues. It would force education . Marginal officials would need to improve to get choice assignments. It would also give newbees the opportunity to select games to observe to see what it takes to make it to championship games. I will say a lot of the "connected" guys are great officials. It's just that at this stage of my officiating career the marginals stand out.

[JRutledge]

Well in our state they are not called regionals or sectionals. It is just the first round, second round until the Championship (5 rounds). The State office makes those decisions based on several factors and if you have been seen by state evaluators. There is one person in each sport that makes the decisions on who gets what playoff games and how far you go. It is not a committee or different assignors in different associations. One person uses a power rating system and any other personal factor he chooses to use to assign all rounds of the playoffs.

Peace

[jjrye22]

First off our area doesn't use set crews, we are thrown together week for week and game for game.

The assignor for us has complete control, and uses it. He decided based on reports from other refs during the year, availability, level of knowledge and level of the game which officals go were.
No rules about being there a certain number of years. He even tries to mix in the best of the new guys on the lower level playoff games, so that they know they are being looked at.

We don't get anything extra for playoff games though, just the base rate for the level of game it is

[keystoneref]

South Central Pa here. Our district has three rounds of district playoffs. We use 14 crews of seven officials. We need 10 crews the 1st weekend. The second weekend we have the four crews that did not work the 1st weekend plus the top three rated crews from the 1st weekend (if we have any AAAA games in our district) If we don't have any AAAA games then only the top crew from the 1st week will work (AAA final). The remaining district finals are the 3rd week and the top two remaing crews will work the A & AA finals (if no AAAA). All our games have an evaluator assigned and for the most part it washes out pretty well. However there is room for improvement. The major complaint in our district isn't who works the district games but who will be nominated to move on to inter-district games. The official's representative is who makes the recomendations for inter-districts and it doesn't seem as if our best crews are nominated. I honestly don't have an answer to this problem, someone has to make the decision and someone is always going to think they were more deserving.

[jjb]

Yesterday I went to the PIAA class A interdistrict quarterfinal game. The officiating was outstanding. Mechanics were crisp and formal. Ball management was fluid . Chain gang were at "attention" and in sync. Although I *****ed earlier , I must admit these guys were good. Better than me. It's what I aspire to be. And what a game. Southern Columbia 76 - Pius X 47. Southern Columbia had 768 yards rushing which is a NFHS national record. The old record was held by Warren Central HS of Indianapolis, Ind.

[SouthGARef]

I have no clue how playoff games are assigned in Georgia, but I believe that games are assigned to an association and then the association chooses the crew. But that's off the cuff.

The biggest problem I have a problem with here is the belief that the longer an official has been working, the better he is. It's simply not true. In my opinion, two or three of the best referees in our association are under 25 but they are continually passed by for older guys, that aren't that good. I've also found that the "older" guys tend to get rules wrong because they can't keep up with rule changes.

Eh, but I love it.

[cdnRef]

In BC, Canada:

There is only one officials' association who holds the contract for provincial highschool ball (we play federation ball for highschool by the way).

We had a new process this year.

We have a pretty big geographical region so we have local game allocators who select the crews to cover games for the three distinct regions. The local allocators make reccomendations to an 'education committee' comprised of retired field officials who are actively assessing and observing officials throughout the year.

The education committee selects crews from the reccomendations for the first round of playoffs based on geography and a few other factors - probably at least some political reasons. Everything from the quarter-finals and up is played in the same venue and all the 'educators' are present. The games are all taped so based on some combination of their impressions from the game and review of the tapes, the committee meets on Monday nights (tonight they pick the crews for the JV, AA, and AAA finals in BC Place ... wish me luck!) to decide who gets moves on to the next round based on their performance in the prior week.

That's it.

[Edited by cdnRef on Nov 29th, 2004 at 04:56 PM]