How does your Assoc handle this?

[dldsooner]

Here in Oklahoma we are part of the OSSAA (Oklahoma Secondary Schools Athletic Association). We put our own crews together, go to the schools every 2 years and get our contracts, and generally the OSSAA has no say over who is on our crew or what games we call.

You have to be a certified official before you can call any playoff game, and that usually takes 5 years to attain certification. The OSSAA assigns playoffs, they look at several criteria to determine if you are worthy of calling playoffs, such as coach's evaluations, official rankings, years with your crew and experience.

With that being said, I would like to say this. I believe that if you are with a crew week in and week out, it makes everyone on that crew a stronger official. You know what each official is looking at and what they are supposed to be doing without having to worry if all areas of the field are being covered properly.

I know that no system is perfect and everyone one of us would argue why their system is better than the next guys, this is only what we do in my part of this world, and I seem to think that it works pretty well most of the time.
Don't get me wrong there is some brown nosing going on so that crews can get the premiere playoff games, but for the most part everything works out real well. If a crew goes out and does what their supposed to do on a Friday night, every Friday night, they will get their just rewards at the end of the season.

[Mike L]

Ref inSoCA forgot one more point, we may NOT draft anyone who was on our crew the year before.
There are a number of requirements that an official must meet in order to become certified within the assoc and therefore draftable.

[MN BB Ref]

Here in MN, at least within my association, the WH is responsible for forming his own crew. I just completed my 3rd season as a varsity WH and the only changes to my crew over that time period is at the U position. After our first season our U left to go to a more experienced crew that had a better schedule. As some have pointed out, the general consensus among the rest of us was "good luck and good riddance." After he left I took the recommendation of our assignment secretary regarding a replacement U. We tried him out last year and at the end of the season I let him go because his standards did not match those of the rest of the crew. Finally this year we found the U that we've been looking for all along. In addition it showed in our game performances and we were rewarded with playoff games in the first two rounds of the playoffs. For us this was an affirmation of the hard work that we've put in and the fact that we now have a crew that is capable of realizing our goal of offiicating a state championship game. Until that happens though we will continue to improve every year and be the best that we can be.