One key thing coach's evaluations do tell us
 

I know a lot of officials have problems with coaches giving evaluations of the officials, but I think they can be worthwhile. Tonight at our chapter meeting, the secretary went over some stats from coaches evaluations and I found one thing very interesting. The evaluations and numbers were tallied (1-5; 1 the best) and averaged. They were then split by home coaches and visiting coaches with the visiting coaches numbers being a bit lower.

At any rate, both sets of coaches rated the wing official on the OTHER side of the field as the lowest rated official of the 5 out there (these are varsity game evaluations only). That tells me that good communication is critical to doing a good job in the coach's eyes. The other wing is really the only official the coach never comes into contact with during a game, and the coach never has an opportunity to offer an opinion or get a response. Obviously, we aren't going to head off all problems, but if we can improve our communication skills, I think these numbers tell us that, on average, we can improve our relationship with coaches.

Comments?

Agreed!
 

This is my first year coaching as an assistant on the high school level. The previous five years I was an active official in the ebofa in the bay area of ca. This year many officials who I know (well) worked many of my games. One in particular has worked three of our home games working LJ on the opposing sideline. I thought he was poor on many occasions this season with ball spotting. (i.e. Forward progress; Signaling touchdown on a run ending at the 4.) However, I worked opposite him maybe twenty times over the years. I never had this poor of an opinion of him when we were working together. I doubt he changed. In my opinion, my view has changed.

I agree that improving communication skills is a way to become a "better" official but 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. Maybe we should look at having H and L swap sides at halftime if the goal is to get guys on both sides of the field to commuinicate with coaches on both sides of the field.

So coaches rate the other wing official lower because they are paying much attention to them and don't really care what their duties are. That would lead me to believe that coaches ratings have little meaning in part because, (a) they appear not to understand the differences between what the wing guys do, (b) they seem to only pay attention to stuff that is directly affecting them, and (c) their general inclination seems to be, "if I'm not watching someone they must not be doing as good as a job."

This just illustrates one of many reasons I find coaches' evaluations worthless.

Also just another example of how someone can take some meaningless numbers to start with and slice it and dice it to show something even more meaningless.

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.

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

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".

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.

I didn't have a huge amount of time to post when I threw out this one sentence, but I want to clarify.

I want coaches and teams to think we hustle, work hard, and don't care who wins. But asking coaches whether we know the rules, use proper mechanics, etc. is useless unless the coach has as much experience as me or more AS AN OFFICIAL.

I've had observing assigning commissioners who have never worked the sport say they "question my positioning" on a certain play. While I'm polite (I do want to be rehired, for the most part) but I wonder how someone who's never walked in my shoes is somehow qualified to rate me.

Can I rate the HS varsity coach who wanted an uncatchable pass called? Can I rate the HS varsity coach who tried to make #73 "eligible?" Can I rate the varsity coach who thinks a personal foul is an automatic first down?

Frankly I don't want to. And I don't want those coaches rating me cause they don't think I know the rules.

Do most states use coach's votes for playoff assignments? If not, what system do you use? If you use coach's votes, are there any other criteria used?

I remember an article in Referee mag. a few years ago that talked about officials rating officials, and the ratings were all extremely high, and the fact that coaches evaluations were all good representative of the quality of officiating. I took to beleiving that coaches evaluations might have meant something, but now after reading this board and others, and seeing how critical we are of ourselvs and others, I'm rethinking my opinion on coaches evaluations, is there any good way officials can rate other officials?

Several ways for us to evaluate each other.

There is an assigning system known as Arbiter which your Association can buy and use online. It has many functions related to administration of an association but also has a feature that permits officials to evaluate each other on line.


There are any number of web-based forms which an association can use to permit members to submit evaluations on officials.

Members can be permitted to submit written evaluations on each other in a "suggestion box" type set up.

Or some members of the group can be designated and trained as observers and do game observations.

I have mixed feelings on coaches' evaluations. First, most coaches don't know rules very well and mechanics even less. But, they can tell if an official can communicate and handle the game. I think we should look at the big picture in coaches' evaluations. Last year we sent out cards to coaches that they would receive on the Monday after the Friday game so that they would have a "cooling off" period. We gleaned two consistent points from the coaches that they saw as areas needing improvement: (1) communication; (2) rules knowledge. We threw out the occasional cheap shot, etc. and looked at the trend in our results. This year we made those two areas an emphasis in our association and I think we are better for it.

My advice is to look at the big picture (consensus if you will) of the evaluations that you get from coaches and act on those items. I think coaches can give us valuable feedback if we throw out the garbage and look at the big picture. In my profession and in my avocation of officiating I like to use the term "feedback" rather than evaluation if possible. Feedback gives the process a more positive look to it and we view it that way now.