IOWA FB Officials
 

For those of you that are fortunate to have playoffs assignments this evening good luck and wishing you a clean and smooth game. Sounds as if the weather should be dry with low 40s temp.

I know a few of you kicked off last night as well in the 8 man game playoffs.

Amazing how fast the football season flies by.

Good Luck Iowa boys!!

No tournament assignment here (I just finished my first varsity season), but I'm looking forward to going out and watching a game for fun. The school district I work for is hosting a game and I never see them play since I'm always on the road. Looks like a great night for football weather wise.

Junker you live here in iowa? good to see some new officials from the state. i know from conversations with the assoc in boone they are not in dire straits yet but we definitley need to increase the number of young fb officials here in the state.

what game are you heading to tonight?

Newton-Marshalltown. I'm sure we some of the same schools. My crew doesn't work 4A, but we work 3A on down in the area (and a few long road trips).

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

Looked like you had a great game Bobo. I caught the score as I left the Newton game (which was also very well played) and then the highlights on the news. Nice job from the 45 seconds of the game I got to see. :D

It has been my understanding that the state was sitting pretty good on football and basketball officials. They REALLY are in need of baseball umpires.

We had Newell Fonda at Bishop Garrigan last night in the first round. 40-13 and a pretty good game actually. Garrigan is pretty good, 10-0 now and it will be interesting to see how the do down the road.
Hoping for a phone call today about a round 2 game.

I'll believe that. The other 4 on my football crew do baseball, and they all already have contracts in Iowa for Summer 2008, with "promises" from the same AD's that they'll have about the same number of games in 2009. The fellas commented that it's easier to get a high school game in Iowa than in Nebraska. I would assume it's because it's a summer sport in Iowa and a spring sport in Nebraska, where it would have to compete with track and whatever else is offered in the spring.