What would make you quit?

[Suudy]

At one point I did quit. And what made me quit was the good ol' boy club in the association I was in at the time. The association had crews for the season, and evaluations were done by your crew. After each game your crewmates would submit evaluations. At the end of the season, the individuals with the highest evaluations were assigned playoff spots (with seniority as a tiebreaker). And the next season, crews were created based upon those evaluations. There was always 2 "elite" crews that were assigned the biggest games.

Well, after 2 seasons with them it became clear. The "elite" crews were the same guys every year. And after every game they all evaluated themselves perfect scores. The evaluation and rating system was clearly meaningless.

It all came to a head at the banquet at the end of my 2nd season. The playoff assignments were announced and they were the same folk as the previous year (and it turns out the year before that as well). The ratings showed them with 100% all season long. There was a clamor among the rest of the association, which the president and assignor dismissed and said they "would address any concerns at the next board meeting." I knew that was a deflection, and I think they thought nobody would come to the board meeting and fight against this crap. Myself and several other officials told them we quit the association and would be transferring to a neighboring association.

In the end, myself at 5 other guys joined the neighboring association. I found out later that several other guys quit as well, and two of the board members resigned. I didn't hear anything more for several years, then I ran into a guy I used to work with in that association. He was one of those "elite" officials. He and some others transferred to our association. I politely inquired about the old association and chatted with him.

After this, I called up a guy I knew that remained in the old association. He told me that the board had been ousted and a whole new slate of officers was elected. They had finally changed the evaluation process to be one of third-party evaluations (an off-crew had its members assigned to evaluate working crews). And the "elite" crew designation was removed. The board did still select which crews worked which games, and the board did create the crews. And unsurprisingly, after the changing of the rules, many of those "elite" officials either quit or transferred.

Now, this didn't make me quit altogether. Fortunately I lived in a large metro area that had multiple associations. But if the association I am in now were to degenerate into something like the above, I would quit. I'd have nowhere else to go (without driving 100+ miles to meetings and games). I might fight it a bit harder than I did back then (I was a relatively young official then), but I dislike politicking within sports.