Are you of the opinion that NO ONE with 4-5 years of experience could hack it at that level?
This is the exact same thing we ALL said when we were at that level. It isn't that "no one" can handle it, but that in general, its better to not show up at a game with 20K there and have that be one of your first varsity --- or first 11 man varsity -- games. Make no mistake -- that has happened in the past and not with the best of results.
I talked at length last season during a game we were observing with a guy that that came in the same year I have. We've worked together some and he does a good job. He was able to get on a pretty good crew his 3rd year and ended up in a first round playoff game in Texas Stadium. The game was a disaster -- he had TWO inadvertent whistles, the line judge badly missed a 4th down spot that forced a change of possession and effectively ended the game, and neither coach wanted anything to do with that crew again. Honestly, they probably only made about half a dozen mistakes the whole day, but they were all big and most were at the end. My buddy admitted he wasn't ready at the time.
Often it isn't a situation where anyone is keeping you or others down; its more of a situation where they don't want to put you in a position where you are likely to fail.
Bottom line (and I still have to live by this myself): BE PATIENT. Texas football is going to be around for a LONG time and chances are you will be too. In about 5-7 years, you will be writing the post I'm writing with much the same info to someone with 3-4 years of experience, wondering why he hasn't advanced as quickly.
Just as an aside: its a generally accepted view that 5 years of industry experience is what one needs in most professions to do their job at a level of excellence. That's roughly 10,000 hours of work. We work about a third of the year and not really full time, but including meetings, training, games, etc. you end up with about a thousand hours a year or so. Give or take. Anyway, it takes 10 years or so (maybe 12) to reach that 10K level in football. As someone who's right at that level, and has been there in my profession and in officiating other sports, I'd say there is a lot of merit to that view.
