Apparently the WOA has a single line in their handbook that gives Todd the right to make uniform rules up as he goes. Pretty convenient.

No one's piling on the obnoxious officials because people only see good-hearted officials who wanted to raise breast cancer awareness and the obnoxious state association that wants to punish them for it.

You say we aren't seeing the whole picture, but there is precious little that could even conceivably change the scenario. The punchline is always going to be that the state association cares more about the color of a whistle (of all things) than women dieing of breast cancer.

Let me repeat: the message from WOA has been to this point that whistles are more important than women.

You can't change that narrative by saying the officials haven't been choir boys in the past.

It's ludicrous to be bent out of shape by the color of a whistle in the first place. Take away the whole breast cancer awareness and if you tell me WOA is going to suspend officials because they used silver whistles instead of black, I'd say they were power hungry bureaucrats that need to find something more productive to do.

Sorry rockyroad, but your association chose this issue to publicly go to battle against, likely without considering the potential fallout and backlash that would be associated with your decision. The result, you have " a wolf by the ears" and there's no safe, or easy, way to let go.

My suggestion would be to curl up while you hold on and wait for the wolf to go to sleep, which may take a while. In the meantime I'd suggest keeping absolutely quiet, because anything you say may keep that wolf awake.

Sometimes being technically right comes up way short of where you expected it would be, and there's just no way to make up the distance.

The WOA was sabotoged by a member of the local association that worked at the TV station. How hard is that to figure out?

If this were to happen in NC, it would not take the NCHSAA long to terminate their relationship with this local association and start efforts to create a new local association. They are independent contractors and have no standing.

The WOA is the one that pointed the gun at their own foot. And yes, officials are usually independent contractors and you can stop hiring any of them for any reason, but if you start treating them poorly you'll find that none of them will work for you either.

Setting up guidelines and creating policies to govern the association is treating them poorly? What total BS.

Suspending people for good deeds is indeed treating them poorly.

Who has been suspended? Nobody.

Either way this was not the fight to have. Even if they did not do anything, they still look stupid for making this an issue with the officials.

Peace

Perhaps. But that doesn't make the local association right.

As rockyroad said, this isn't the first issue.

As I said, if this happened here, the NCHSAA would dump this group as soon as the season was over and create a new association.

So how would they cover the games after losing an entire association's worth of officials (not to mention any collateral damage from other associations)?

One more reason I am glad I live in Illinois. We do not have these "association" issues as others do around the country. Too much drama over silly issues.

Peace

From talking to several officials in Washington, I don't think either would be an issue. You do what you have to do.

My crew has been using white whistles for four years now. We are in deep trouble.

interesting story... I have a friend in st. louis, thinks organized sports are about as intersting as lint. seriously, he knows that football is a sport, and that's about it.

We we're talking last night, and he asked me if i had heard about the referee's that were getting fired in washington state, because they wanted to support breast cancer awareness by wearing pink whistles. (I know this isn't accurate, but it's the story and impression that he was relating to me.)

That's the impression Todd and the woa chose to make.