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  #1 (permalink)  
Old Sat Mar 24, 2007, 04:56pm
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Officials Training - MBA Project

I am working on my MBA and creating a business plan for my last class. Since I love officiating, I wanted to write a plan for a business related to officiating. What I've come up with is a business that will help develop high school officials throughout the country. It would include a series of clinics, training videos targeted toward high school officials, training programs to help recruit and training new officials, and various software tools that will help with evaluating officials, managing associations, and additional training.

I would love to get feedback from other officials. You can either post your comments here or send me a PM and we can talk off line. Key questions:
  1. Would officials in your area be interested in clinics developed by an outside company but largely using local officials for handlng the details and presentations?
  2. Do you feel your local and/or state associations do a poor job of evaluating officials especially for determining playoff assignments?
  3. Do local associations provide training and mentoring programs to help new officials?
  4. Do you feel local associations would find value in purchasing some of these products and services?
  5. What do you feel is the best development tool that could be offered in your area?
  6. Does your area already have clinics for officials? Are they well-attended? What do you like/not like about them?

Thanks to anyone who wants to provide input. I've had a lot of fun so far coming up with ideas and creating a plan. The project is due April 16 so I'm quickly running out of time!
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Old Sat Mar 24, 2007, 06:04pm
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Quote:
1. Would officials in your area be interested in clinics developed by an outside company but largely using local officials for handlng the details and presentations?
No. Clinicians are pretty particular about the material they use and unfortunately, much of it is regionally based. For example, in Texas, things are going to filter down from the Big 12 Supervisors and staff officials, who are the ones going to be giving the clinic. If stuff is written incorporating, for example, what the Big East does, they won't be interested.

Quote:
2. Do you feel your local and/or state associations do a poor job of evaluating officials especially for determining playoff assignments?
In Texas football, half or more of the assignments are coaches picks. Where they aren't, local chapters are given the games and they choose the crews. This is a very subjective question. Those getting a lot of playoff games would say no. Others would say yes. There's no objective way here to decide.

Quote:
3. Do local associations provide training and mentoring programs to help new officials?
Yes.

Quote:
4. Do you feel local associations would find value in purchasing some of these products and services?
No. Not under any circumstances. The thing is most of the folks putting on these programs believe firmly they know more than whatever the company is that put together the materials. In most cases, they are correct.

Quote:
5. What do you feel is the best development tool that could be offered in your area?
More local clinics.

Quote:
6. Does your area already have clinics for officials? Are they well-attended? What do you like/not like about them?
Yes, we have them and yes, they are well attended. I would like to see more on field clinics, even if simulated.
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  #3 (permalink)  
Old Sun Mar 25, 2007, 06:57am
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Posts: 463
One point to keep in mind: 'round here, our local associations only handle high school and youth games. The various college conferences (mostly the ECAC) do their own assignments and evaluation, and even though some guys work both college and lower level, there isn't (to my knowledge) a separate association of the college officials.

Quote:
Originally Posted by bisonlj
1. Would officials in your area be interested in clinics developed by an outside company but largely using local officials for handlng the details and presentations?
Hmmm... possibly. We're getting a great deal out of a college training DVD - not sure where it's from, but it's our local assignor and interpreter and college guys who are presenting it.

Quote:
2. Do you feel your local and/or state associations do a poor job of evaluating officials especially for determining playoff assignments?
Our system is based on a rating we get for each varsity game from each coach, plus one for the year from our assignor. The highest and lowest are thrown out. I think it needs a lot of work.

Quote:
3. Do local associations provide training and mentoring programs to help new officials?
Yes - we do a pretty good job of getting our rookies up to speed and keeping an eye on them throughout the first year. Followup to that is a bit weak, though.

Quote:
4. Do you feel local associations would find value in purchasing some of these products and services?
Depends on which association, and what the cost was. We might. Our neighbors immediately to the north have a much less... professional reputation. (Occasionally, there are games with mixed crews. The complaints from our guys are impressive.) From what I hear, they probably wouldn't.

Quote:
5. What do you feel is the best development tool that could be offered in your area?
The two things that help me the most are film and field work. The former has been lacking, though we've gotten more in the last year. The latter we do OK with. (See below.)

Quote:
6. Does your area already have clinics for officials? Are they well-attended? What do you like/not like about them?
Not as such. Here's what we've got:
* Monthly off-season rules meetings. Generally we pick a topic and beat it to death. Lately we've been looking at the aforementioned DVD, which has been very nice.
* Five major high-school scrimmages during the summer (dates overlap). There are usually at least six teams present at each, so we can get at least three full crews going, and extra officials usually pick up a newer guy to shadow and give tips to.
* One pre-season mechanics session. This really isn't very good - we break out by position, demonstrate some mechanics stuff, and go home. If anything needs improvement, this is it.
* In-season presentations. Last year, we had some veteran college guys from nearby come in and talk about tough judgements calls. One week was holding, another was pass interference.
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Old Mon Mar 26, 2007, 05:02am
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I figure this isn't really going to help much, but better too much input than too little.

Are area is set up with mixed crews. We don't have fixed people we work with, and depending on the level of football the experience of the crew is set. Also to note is that the teams have to supply people to be officials (which are trained and tested by the main organization). This means there are quite a few people in their first year that aren't particularly interested in being good officials - they just need to show up a few times to fullfil the obligation.

Our assignor has a lot to deal with getting all the games and crews organized - and has the added frustration that the unmotivated officials that drop out at the last moment.

1., 4. and 6. - there is generally no extra money available for extra expenses during the year except what is planned.

2. Evaluation is done but (up till now) not really given out for public information. Playoffs generally need certain criteria of license level (years of experience and certain tests passed) - based on the level of the playoff game. The most enthusiastic and well based new officials might even get playoff games for the lowest levels.

3. Manditory training at the beginning of each year, and they have tried having monthly rule nights, but there wasn't enough interest to keep them going. No mentoring program - and it wouldn't really work too well because generally there aren't enough officials to go around for the games never mind having extras go and shadow them.

5. Development tool - the organization bought a good camera for taping mechanics (different than the focus a team video would give us), and had an 'eager beaver' who spent a lot of hours disecting and editing local video for training purposes. This had a great influence on the training this year, to see OURSELVES on video for good and bad mechanics instead of NCAA or NFL video.
Most useable tool for the near future would be easy to use video software for editing training tapes, and some software that they are developing to help the white hat with all the formulas that need to be prepared - travel costs, who is on the crew, gameday reciepts (we get paid at the game), crew evaluation forms (very short report on impressions of the game).

Probably doesn't help you much, but remember each organization does things differently, and many have already invested a lot of time/money into a particular way of working (like our assigner software, and the new formula software which are very specific to our area). Anything new would have to be a marked improvment to justify investment - not just a shiny new toy.

Good luck (my wife is finishing her MBA this year too).

James
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Old Tue Mar 27, 2007, 09:58pm
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1. Would officials in your area be interested in clinics developed by an outside company but largely using local officials for handlng the details and presentations?

Doubtful - I can't see our association as a whole paying an outside source. Individual officials would feel free to take advantage of it. As for local officials handling a presentation, I think a well respected outsider would have a greater effect.

2. Do you feel your local and/or state associations do a poor job of evaluating officials especially for determining playoff assignments?

No- to work playoffs in NC, an official must be a Class 1 or 2 official and this rating is based on test scores and local & state clinic meeting attendance. That is not to say that local politics doesn't rear its head in the selection of the later rounds.

3. Do local associations provide training and mentoring programs to help new officials?

An area I feel we are lagging is training. We have no formal program.

4. Do you feel local associations would find value in purchasing some of these products and services?

Possibly

5. What do you feel is the best development tool that could be offered in your area?

Film analysis using standard 5 man NF mechanics. I've had the opportunity to review college film but I don't work 7 man so I come away without a full understanding of what my level of officiating needs to see.

6. Does your area already have clinics for officials? Are they well-attended? What do you like/not like about them?

We have local associating meetings and a state clinic meeting. It allows us the chance to see each other when in fact we will probably work with only half of the members in a given season. There tends to be too much B.S.'ing and war stories told when we need to focus on rules and "spirit" and mechanics.
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Old Sat Mar 31, 2007, 02:52pm
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Thanks to everyone who has posted comments in here and via PM. The plan is due in 3 weeks so I'm trying to get it wrapped up.

As I was doing some web searches for clinics I found this article:

http://sports.espn.go.com/ncf/previe...ory?id=2543746

The article gives a great example of the effort of put forth by officials (ACC in this case) and how much goes into being a football official.
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Old Sat Mar 31, 2007, 09:26pm
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Posts: 99
[QUOTE=bisonlj]

I would love to get feedback from other officials. You can either post your comments here or send me a PM and we can talk off line. Key questions:
  1. Would officials in your area be interested in clinics developed by an outside company but largely using local officials for handlng the details and presentations?

    No. We have our own educational program geared to our mechanics and our way of doing things
  2. Do you feel your local and/or state associations do a poor job of evaluating officials especially for determining playoff assignments?

    No. We do a great job of it
  3. Do local associations provide training and mentoring programs to help new officials?

    Ours does. We have developed them over 40+ years.

  4. Do you feel local associations would find value in purchasing some of these products and services?

    Maybe. Ours would not.
  5. What do you feel is the best development tool that could be offered in your area?

    Our training program.
  6. Does your area already have clinics for officials? Are they well-attended? What do you like/not like about them?

    There are a couple around. I don't see much value in them. All they do is screw up our members who attend because they don't teach our mechanics.

Thanks to anyone who wants to provide input. I've had a lot of fun so far coming up with ideas and creating a plan. The project is due April 16 so I'm quickly running out of time!
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