One key thing coach's evaluations do tell us

[Texas Aggie]

I can't see how that is going to help the wing on the opposite side who will never get to use those skills with the coach anyway.

That wasn't my point. What I was saying was that it appears, rightly or wrongly, that coaches view officials they can't communicate with as lower performing than those they can communicate with (or who are just in earshot of them). I'm not suggesting we need to figure out ways to help a line judge communicate better with a visiting team's coach, but rather, to use this data as an indication that if we improve our communications skills with coaches in general, there's a good chance our games will go smoother.

If anyone thinks this is meaningless, so be it. I can't quite figure out why you posted. I think its generally agreed that coach's evaluations aren't a great source of information to foster improvement of officials, especially against things like this forum, camps, individual evaulations, etc. But I do think that if you can take the aggregate trends and use that data to explain behavior, you can come up with useful information.

[sj]

Perhaps we should do with evaluations what coaches do with rule books....prop up the legs of old office sofas.

[TXMike]

Originally Posted by Texas Aggie

I'm not suggesting we need to figure out ways to help a line judge communicate better with a visiting team's coach, but rather, to use this data as an indication that if we improve our communications skills with coaches in general, there's a good chance our games will go smoother.

That's pretty much a no-brainer isn't it? We don't need coach's evaluations to tell us that. The issue is what do we do to make those improvements? My experience is the guys who do not communicate well with coaches do not communicate well with anyone. And training someone how to communicate is much more than giving him some "catch phrases" to use. The closest thing I have seen is the "verbal judo" curriculum that has been modified for officials and is being taught by the creator of the "program".

[FootballRef05]

For the most part I don't find much value in coaches rating my performance on the field. I would say in my experience 99% of the coached I talk to have not picked up a rule book in years, if ever. This is apparent by some of the questions you get on the field and that we see here, 'Reporting as Eligible, Uncatchable pass, Outside the tackle box, play to the whistle and so on. It's a simple fact that coaches do not understand the rules; like fans they know what they see on Sunday. I asked a coach one time if he would let me call the next offensive series and he could officiate for me. I know as much about coaching as he does about officiating.

We make mistakes on the field, we're human. However we are easy targets for coaches to make excuses for themself for their teams poor performance.