Game Control Question
 

During the course of a game, under Nebraska High School regulations, the game officials have control of the game, as far as penalties, personal fouls, and ejections are concerned.

At any point does the school administration or league officials have the ability to address the officials during the course of the game to let them know they were wrong in either ejecting, or not ejecting, players for personal fouls, or perceived dirty play?

I believe the game officials have control and may be addressed after the game is completed, in an official manner. There are others in the mentioned league who believe the administration must step in during the game to correct anything the officials are or are not doing.

Comments? Questions? Any input is appreciated, trying to see what the professionals think of the scenario....

I'm sure you posted this as a serious question, but I almost broke out laughing when I read it.

Other than severe weather warnings or a life-threatening situation in the stadium area, administrators have no business addressing game officials during the course of the game.

No.

No, game administration or the head coach could file complaints or objections after the game with the proper governing body. There is no "appeal process" in-game.

In NC, the NCHSAA only reviews requests that an incorrect player was ejected, such as #21 instead of #31 as there is a mandatory suspension for being ejected.

A coach could request a "coach-official" conference but that discussion could only entail a misapplication of a rule, such as a player or coach not being ejected after their 2nd unsportsmanlike conduct foul. Judgment calls such as whether or not an official deemed an act worthy of ejection are not up for debate or discussion, except amongst the officiating crew.

We are "judge, jury, and executioner". Any other method would be untenable.

Can't speak to what individual states do but the answer to your question would be no, they do not in any situation that I've ever seen. They maybe able to appeal some decisions to the state association but they have no business interfering with the crew's administration of the playing rules.

Now, tell us what happened.

The game was a championship game, between two very, very competitive rivals. They had played already during the regular season, and Team A beat Team B by a score of 13-7

It was the only loss of the year for Team B (7-1), Team A entered the game at 8-0

The incident occurred post game, literally as the last championship medal was handed to the last player from Team A (which won the rematch 38-9), the administrator was confronted by an irate parent of Team B, literally at the 50 yard line.

The parent berated the administrator that there were a few personal foul calls against Team A in the second half, which from her perspective in the stands, should have warranted ejections. (The plays I witnessed could very easily have gone both ways, and were likely retaliations, since at that point the score was already 31-2). SHE went on to say that the administrator should have come down from the press box and corrected the officials who had determined the offenses were penalties, but did not warrant ejections. The administrator repeated numerous times to the parent that the officials have control of the game and that they were very experienced in what they do, and that even if the administrator saw offenses that he felt incorrectly handled, he was not able to approach the officials during the course of the game to address them. After a few minutes of constant onslaught from the parent, the administrator simply walked away.

The next day the parent sent emails to the administrators, stating the winning team should forfeit the game for playing with illegal players (players she deemed illegal herself, because she said since they should have been ejected, and weren't, that they were actually ejected players still participating, thus illegal)

The crew for the championship games in our league consist of the most veteran and well respected officials in our pool, and they handled the game correctly, and I think, as I got to witness it all, that it was a case of sour grapes from a parent with a lot of interest in seeing her kid succeed.

So this is all about a ticked off, obviously loony parent?? What was a parent doing on the field after the game? If I'm the administrator, I tell the parent we may speak later at an appropriate time and then our school SRO is going to escort them off of the field.

Much ado about nothing.

LMFAO. It takes all kinds in this world.

Give me her phone number, I'd love to talk to her.

Imagine that. :rolleyes:

I don't think the problem today, is that there are more loony or whacky people. The problem seems to be that there are a lot more people who, for whatever reason, pay attention to the loony and whacky people.

Since we are still in the middle of the HS post-season...I'm guessing you are referring to a previous year...or worse you are talking about one of the junior, little kid leagues...parents shouldn't be allowed to attend those games.

As was stated before, if the administrator has some issue of safety to bring to my attention I want to hear from him...I.E. storm warning, (happened once this year) or the ambulance had to leave for an emergency call, and school district policies required an ambulance present for the contest to continue. (also happened this year) so we had to wait about 25 minutes for the ambulance from the next town to arrive.

Also happened once this year about halfway through the 2nd quarter the administrator got our attention to tell us two of the visiting teams players should have been ineligible due to having been ejected the previous week, He wanted us to remove them from the game. Since I have no jurisdiction to rule on the eligibility of players in this situation, my response was if that were the case, the state association would gladly hear their protest, after the game.

It turned out they had received 2 PFs in the previous game and not 2 USCs, and their coach benched them, but they were not ejected.

No.

And if an administrator did this, I would simply right what we call a "Special Report" which is a form used for ejections and other issues that need to be addressed with the state and let the state deal with why an someone from the school is interfering with the job of the officials. And then I would also call my assignor and let them know what is taking place so they can deal with the issue on their end. The bottom line is no administrator has the right to interfere with the job of the officials and if they do they can pay penalties more than suspension.

Peace

We'd be there all night if we called what the fans perceived to be a foul. Bottom line is that the fans do not understand the rules. If they did, they'd be officials. Most acts that require disqualification require judgement. What a fan thinks is a disqualifying action may differ with the officials. If the administrator tries to tell me that we have to eject a certain player, I may be inclined to hand him my flag and tell him he start calling all the fouls.

If an administrator tells me that we have to eject a certain player, I may be inclined to eject the administrator.

I swear, just about the time I think I've heard it all...

John Wayne would have given her a come back to reality slap, a shot of whiskey to calm her nerves, then a big 'ol kiss as she slowly melts into his arms.

Whose name is on the check you're getting paid by?

If they told you right now that the football game is over, this is now a soccer game, would you stay on to officiate it?

I am missing your point. What do you mean whose name is on the check? Who is saying the game is over and who has jurisdiction to make that determination?

Peace

Maybe you'd care to elaborate on this.

Not hard to do with one of his posts lately. I hesitate to call it circular logic.

And when said school hires a plumber to fix the leaking sprinkler system, the administrator can tell him the job is done while wearing a raincoat in the office.

Where are you trying to take this? A team lost a big game and a parent went ballistic and accosted a game administrator. It sounds like the administrator tried to be patient and explain reality to the parent, who clearly lost it, and eventually gave up trying to reason with her and walked away.

Verifying her insanity, she subsequently sent a bunch of e-mails to further her complaints, which I presume also fell on deaf ears. The game is history, one team won, which requires that one team had to lose and life goes on.

I don't see where anyone did anything wrong, other than one parent blowing a gasket, which can be an unfortunate byproduct of the excitement generated by a great game.

Think how fortunate we all are, that when we go home, THAT WOMAN is not waiting for us screaming, "You won't believe what happened today".

Honestly, I think he was looking for EXACTLY the response he got in the first few posts. He was looking for support for his position that he should NOT have interfered with the game. And he got it in spades. I don't think the OP was expecting to be told that interfering with the game was OK.

To finish my post...

The executive board of the league, the GMs of both teams, the league president, vice president, and secretary, the head of officials, and the head of officials from another league in the area (thereby being completely neutral to the game), had a meeting last night, and viewed the entire game film, so that the issue could be put to rest completely.

and guess what? None, zero, zip of her allegations were evident in the game. It was a hard fought, competitive game, with high emotions and was controlled completely and flawlessly by the officials (which it was also determined that the 4 game officials had a combined 65 years of officiating experience at the high school level).

The executive board will be relaying its findings back to said crazy lady... along with a request for an apology to the administration for the berating that followed the game and the threats made in emails since. If the apology is not made, the parent faces a suspension heading into next year.

So she goes from demanding ejections to receiving one herself... justice comes full circle.

Thanks for the help and the support on this issue, I always hold the officials in our league on a very high level, I respect the game and the people who are charged to enforce the rules of the game. Your jobs are not easy and you deal with the emotions and craziness on the most professional of levels.

thanks for all you do

(oh, I'm the administrator in question....fyi)...

Hold on here, was this youth league? Your OP mentioned Nebraska HS regulations so I guess we assumed this was at a HS game. Your use of the term administrator implies this was school ball as well.

If this was youth league, then this explains it all. You should have mentioned it in the original post. Those kind of antics are just another day at the office for youth football and why many officials prefer not to work at that level if they don't have to.

Yep.

Peace

I'm saying that if someone hires you for an expert's job, then you do the job you were hired to do as you understand it. However, if in the middle of the job the person who hired you changes what you understood to be the specs, you have the option of completing the job under the new spec or quitting at that point, and then it's a question of whether you should be paid pro rata or what. That sort of thing came up all the time on "The People's Court".

:confused:

Just stop.

I get it now. This is satire.

No.

Correct by not hiring them again. That is the option.

It's not satire unless you take it to be that. I'm just trying to clarify the issue by getting down to what proceeds from the fundamental assumptions. Apparently I need to make it more explicit for some of you.

Wouldn't you say sports officiating, whether you get paid or not, is a skilled kind of job that's turned over to experts for them to take charge of during the job? It shares that characteristic with other situations like doing construction or maintenance work. The job requires a certain degree of concentration and control that the expert needs to be effective. It doesn't go quite as far as, say, piloting a ship or plane or doing surgery wherein you have people's lives in your hands during the job and really, really can't be interrupted midway. Maybe a closer analog might be musicians doing a public or private performance as part of an orchestra, where an interruption and change of course would likely be deleterious but not catastrophic, but it has certain things in common with the construction work that may be more likely to come up.

You're in a situation where someone, the customer, has engaged you for this work. You had an understanding that the work would be done at a given place and time according to certain known regulations, in this case those of a state HS ***'n regarding football. Those regs include not only the conduct of the game but even the meta-consideration of what aspects of the proceedings the officials have control of, such as who gets to talk to whom. This is not much different from someone asking you to install something in a bldg. on a schedule where it's also undergoing other work. It is not unheard of for the customer in such a case to suddenly, in the middle of the job, demand a deviation from the standard that the contractor was following. Some of the work has already been done, and if the new understanding is not agreed to between the customer and the contractor, if the contractor quits the job there needs to be some equitable settlement regarding payment.

Similarly here. In the middle of the game the customer demands that you deviate from the regulations that were originally understood to apply according to your agreement with him. You might walk off the job or you might continue according to what the customer now wants.

In a case like a football game, depending on the organiz'n that's putting it on, it may not be immediately obvious who the customer is. A particular administrator may have authority over the game sufficient to cancel or alter it at any moment, or responsibility for it may be diffused within the organiz'n such that there is no single boss with authority to do any arbitrary thing about it at any time.