In another thread I noticed it seems coaches do the ratings.

In my limited research I have found coach ratings to be subjective and not a true measure of an official's performance. Example, a number of rating systems use a 1 to 5 scale with various categories. Can you rely on those ratings to determine what you need to improve?

NASO has an evaluation sheet that uses phrases to describe various expectations of officials. Example, was the official properly positioned?

I personally think the NASO idea is better because the official has something concrete he can review for improvement.

How do you feel about that type of system versus the 1 to 5?

Lastly, what has been the experience with associations that use evaluators to determine ratings. Are they fair? Who does the rating?

I don't think a coach should be allowed to rate officials. I haven't met too many coaches that knew the rules well enough to rate me on how well my rules knowledge is. I've never met one that could rate my mechanics. If they want me to flag holding on the other side of the field then it's obvious he knows nothing about mechanics. It's no different than allowing me to go grade a brain surgeon on his techniques. I know nothing about surgery so why should my grading hold any water. Same thing about a coaches rating. If he's doing his job as a coach then how would he be able to give a rating. We do let coaches fill out a rating card but in my association these cards don't have any bearing on our advancement or assignments. During a pregame meeting once, I noticed on the desk of the coach that he had already filled out the card prior to the game. Since were supposed to be honest, how about set up a system in which we grade ourselves.

Lets rate each other.
 

I'm in favor of joint rating. They use this in the private school league in our state. The crew chief gets a card wtih questions regarding the teams, players, coaching staff, etc. The crew completes it after each game. Each coaching staff has to complete a review of the officials. Then I believe all three reveiws get sent back to the league officers and the results are tabulated and analysed and communicated to the concerned parties.

Re: Lets rate each other.
 

I agree. Iowa has a system where the crew gets to rate the teams' players, coaches, and fans, but I'm not sure if the coaches get to complete a review of the officials. The ratings the crew makes are sent to the state association.

I agree with Ed that the coaches evaluations are generally pretty subjective but you can sometimes get something out of that. For example, if your reviews from coaches consistently come back with something like, "won't listen to me," then perhaps you're not "listening" enough.

Re: Re: Lets rate each other.
 

In Iowa, we do rate the coaches, players, and fans for each varsity game. We give the coaches a blue card with all of our names and positions. The coaches recommend three crews that they feel are worthy of playofs.

I would like to see Oklahoma do something different. Each coach is supposed to fill out evals on the officals and send them to the state. We have 3 levels of ratings for officials, U, R and C. Our test scores, meetings/clinics attended, the number of evals we get back from the coaches and the scores of those evals are used to determine those ratings. We need something like 7 evals turned in to have a chance of going up to in rating. My second year of calling I did about 7 games (14 possible coaches ratings) and my 3rd and 4th year I did 9 games (18 possible). I don't know where I am at going into this year but I have not been able to move up from a U (uncertified) rating after my second or 3rd years because I have not been able to get enough coaches to turn in their ratings. I go to all my meetings and have scored no lower than a 95 on my tests. So this is the only thing holding me back. It really is frustrating the hell out of me as like most officials I wants to move up and feel I cannot because of it. I am to the point that I am ready to give up football and switch over to fall baseball and fast pitch softball.

cowboyfan1, are you saying that you can not yet work varsity because coaches haven't turned in enough rating cards? That would be very unfortuntate if that was the case. We have our cadets in NJ give cards to coaches but they don't always turn them in. But we don't make that a requirement for moving up. We assign varsity officials with cadets and those officials report back to the JV Supervisor / Assigner on how well that official performs and if he's ready to be sent for the state certification. That would be unfortunate to hold someone back due to non-responses from coaches. I worked something like 12 varsity games last year which would give a total of 24 cards. My crew had a total of 4 cards turned in that I know of.

cowboyfan1,

What part of Oklahoma are you in? I'm only 30 mins. from the Oklahoma border and we have 1 member from Oklahoma in our chapter. We have 1st year guys working varsity so if you want to cross the river you be welcomed by any chapter.

I do work varsity ball, in fact have white hatted a number of ball games. The C (certified) officails are the ones who get playoff assignments (mostly). The playoffs are assigned to crews. So obviously if someone needs to fill a crew spot, logic would dictate that they want officials that are certified if they are wanting a playoff crew. The number of games listed above are just the varsity assignments I have worked. Overall from 1st and 2nd graders up to varisty I worked around 90 games last year.

I am up in the Tulsa area, bit of a drive to get to Texas.

Coaches are very subjective. Two stories about losing coaches:

First, one coach put a big 'X' over the entire eval.

Another losing coach gave the crew the lowest mark in every category, even apperance. I saw the game. You can disagree on calls, but the crew looked great appearance wise.

In short, I'm not against coaches rating crews, but the said ratings should not be used at the end of the year for playoff assignments, etc. (too many coaches are grinding axes).

In a perfect world other officials (retired officials and whatnot--I do not know all of the logistics) would evaluate each crew, and not for the "correctness" of calls (many times it would be to tough to determine this without the assistance of replay), but rather for apperance, positioning, etc.

I just recently stumbled across this forum. I wish I would've found it back when this topic was originally discussed. In Missouri, we are rated by the coaches. When I got my ratings from the pervious year, I was irate! My rating dropped (for the bad) by almost .5 points. Missouri uses 1-5 scale, one being playoff/championship quality, 2 district, 3 varsity, 4 JV and below, and 5 time to hang up the whistle (that is my definition for 5). They also check you in 9 different categories for needs improvement. Things like rules knowledge, poise, hustle, appearance, etc. After reading the State's definitions for these categories, the language is VERY loaded. Poise for instance, I got like four coaches that checked I need to improve on that. Well you look at the definition of poise, one word they use is maturity. I was 27 during last season. That was my 9th year officiating football, 8th doing varsity contests. On my crew, I was the youngest by 11 years. Do you think the word "maturity" might have stuck in the coaches' heads?

All in all, I do not think there is a "perfect" system. I think coaches should be allowed some feedback, but I wish the feedback provided was specific. Identify specific points, don't just dump it under some heading. Plus, guys on the wings and the R will always have lower ratings because they have the most contact with the coaches.

Feedback from coaches is a key part of becoming a better official. Granted, we all will have to take their comments with a grain of salt, but I think there is some, albeit small, value in coaches’ observations.

I think every exec board member of the various chapters clearly understand some of this (OK, a lot of this) needs to be taken with a grain of salt. But numbers don't lie. If you have 7/8 coaches saying an official looks like $hit with respect to appearance and he has an attitude problem, then statistics are showing you probably have a bad apple in the bunch and that official probably doesn't deserve to be on a crew or get a playoff assignment. I know some coaches are friends and go to dinner, etc. but unless there's some widespread conspiracy... With that said, when the coach from <u>every game you worked in a season</u> says you have an attitude problem....well stats don't lie...and that is useful information!

One last thing...our exec board weeds out the "complainers." This past season we had a coach (2-6 on the season) EVERY WEEK give bad grades to the crew along with nasty comments. Rest assured those cards are thrown out and not even considered.

In the Seattle assocition we use a peer evealuation. But at the pre-game each coach is given a card with the crew's names, and a 1 to 5 rating for each position with space for comments.
These cards are not used for ratings purposes, but are used to determine if there are consistant problems.
We do a bit of rating on the teams. We give a scholarship award to the team(s) that get reccomended by the membership for exceptional sportsmanship.