IOWA FB Officials

[BoBo]

We just worked the Newton Lincoln game last week, have pella at boone tonight. If you have interest in the CIML schools let me know i can get you in touch with the assignor. send me a personal message on here.

[Junker]

I was surprised at the score of the Lincoln game. I was going to make it to that one as my regular crew was off, but a friend had a health issue so I went up and worked in Nevada vs Boone. You could have a pretty good game tonight. I'll have to try and catch the highlights. Thanks for the offer on hooking me up in the metro, but the crew I joined has been around for a while and they aren't interested in 4A ball. I do know the assignor through basketball (I've been working hoops for 8 years and baseball for 4). I'm just a newbie on the football field. Do you work any of the lower level DM games for Bill? I get out there every few weeks. WE can try to work to gether sometime if you do.

[Bob M.]

REPLY:Newton, Iowa...home (make that 'former home') of the Maytag company, right? And still the home of great Maytag Blue Cheese.

[Junker]

Yes, you would be correct Bob. There are a few people out there working for like a week or so and then the doors are closed on Maytag here for good. The dairy is still around and going strong though.

Not to get off the point, but I'm from Omaha and my crew work some Western Iowa games, i.e., Glidden-Ralston, Sidney, Corning, etc. I'm the guy that primarily does the scheduling for our crew, and am looking towards the next 2 year cycle. Are there any schools west of DM that I should avoid contact with because they use an assignor similar to the CIML? I just want to save my time and postage, etc, in contacting schools about our crew's availability. Thanks.

[BoBo]

Class 3A District 8 has the AD at Harlan assign game the last two years i know. We usually do 2 games a year over in their district.

The headache in Iowa this time around is their is a strong rumor that the state is going to do the scheduling for all games both district and nondistrict. So schools will have no say so at all.

As far as the wild day after for us officials getting dates will be a nightmare. That is one reason why i like the assignors so i am locked in ahead of time.

Selfish i know but dont miss the 6 am calls from ADs trying to find crews

[buckrog64]

Good luck tonight....

I'm not sure football will see the huge crush on need for officials, but I sure wonder about basketball sometimes....a lot of these small Iowa schools have separate school districts that share one football program, and then may or may not compete against each other in basketball. So a lot of schools have their own b-ball programs which means the need for more officials in many cases. Some guys I know who have done varsity work over the years are finding little to complain about when reffing lower level games on a local basis, particularly if there are a lot of games to be covered. I know one night in my town, with two high schools and two middle schools, there was a need for something like 20 officials to cover the different games, from 7th grade on up to varsity.

Originally Posted by BoBo

Class 3A District 8 has the AD at Harlan assign game the last two years i know. We usually do 2 games a year over in their district.

The headache in Iowa this time around is their is a strong rumor that the state is going to do the scheduling for all games both district and nondistrict. So schools will have no say so at all.

As far as the wild day after for us officials getting dates will be a nightmare. That is one reason why i like the assignors so i am locked in ahead of time.

Selfish i know but dont miss the 6 am calls from ADs trying to find crews

I was going to say, I do remember one assignor for an 8-man district calling me a couple years ago. I thought it was odd he was the AD at one school and he was calling me about a game involving two other schools. Then it occured to me that they had district meetings and he must have drew the short straw to get the assigning job (I would have to think it was the short straw...I wouldn't want that job!). But there were other AD's who called me directly about their own games.

Does that rumor "say" that the state association will schedule all the games AND assign the officials OR they will set the dates for specific games? The way I understand it, the district meetings were set up so that the schools could talk about which dates the games were played on, provided they followed the week schedule the state set up.

In Nebraska, the last cycle got screwed up because the state's computer inadvertantly released the schedules 12 hours ahead of schedule. As a result, the schools were screaming the state association should take over the assigning of officials. The board declined, saying they didn't want to be burdened with whining from the schools when they get assigned someone they don't want.

[bisonlj]

Originally Posted by BoBo

Class 3A District 8 has the AD at Harlan assign game the last two years i know. We usually do 2 games a year over in their district.

The headache in Iowa this time around is their is a strong rumor that the state is going to do the scheduling for all games both district and nondistrict. So schools will have no say so at all.

As far as the wild day after for us officials getting dates will be a nightmare. That is one reason why i like the assignors so i am locked in ahead of time.

Selfish i know but dont miss the 6 am calls from ADs trying to find crews

In general, Indiana doesn't do any assigning at the varsity level. It is up to crews to network with ADs to schedule games. Our crew is prett full through 2011 already, half a 2012 schedule and 1 game in 2013. I've talked to crews and schools that are booked through 2013. It's a crazy system but at least we have some control over where we work. I wonder if it would be nicer to have an assigner process (we might get an opportunity to work some more interesting schools), but I'm sure that is full of politics. The playoffs are assigned by the state on a week to week basis.