Hypothetical for Texas Guys

[TexDoc]

An official misapplies a rule, the coach argues the ruling to a point that he is ejected from the game (not arguing whether or not you can eject a coach in football).  UIL determines that the rule was misapplied.  Should the punishment of the coach be waived or diminished?  Should the official(s) be punished for misapplication of the rule?  What punishment, suspension, monetary, what?

Let's say the official misjudges a call (not a mis-application of the rules) and the coach is ejected. Any different?

Should the adjudication of a coach be handled differently than that of an official, seeing that the former is a "professional" and the letter is practicing his "avocation?"  Does professionalism end at the classroom door even in the face of unfairly or incorrectly applied rules?

[rickref]

An official misapplies a rule, the coach argues the ruling to a point that he is ejected from the game (not arguing whether or not you can eject a coach in football).  UIL determines that the rule was misapplied.  Should the punishment of the coach be waived or diminished?  Should the official(s) be punished for misapplication of the rule?  What punishment, suspension, monetary, what?

Let's say the official misjudges a call (not a mis-application of the rules) and the coach is ejected. Any different?

Should the adjudication of a coach be handled differently than that of an official, seeing that the former is a "professional" and the letter is practicing his "avocation?"  Does professionalism end at the classroom door even in the face of unfairly or incorrectly applied rules?

Here is my take and my opinions. Just for sake of conversation.

An officials misapplication of a rule should never ever be grounds to allow a coach to get a free pass, go off, and get ejected.
Should the punishment of the coach be waived or diminished?  - Depends on the behavior and actions he took. He is still a paid faculty staff member of a school and in charge of kids. The situation should be looked at and all the facts.  Some punishment must still be applied unless the officials really went out of their  way and just tossed him.

Should the official(s) be punished for misapplication of the rule? ---Yes and should be handled locally and that be communicated through TASO to the UIL. Only in cases where this action caused issues with a coach being ejected should the officials be considered for a reprimand. Severity be determined by facts. Suspensions should be the consideration.

Let's say the official misjudges a call (not a mis-application of the rules) and the coach is ejected. Any different? - Judgement is always part of the game and can not be eliminated. If a call is misjudged then it is. If coach is ejected on arguing / acting like a fool on this type issue then he should be on his own if he gets the boot.

Should the adjudication of a coach be handled differently than that of an official, seeing that the former is a "professional" and the letter is practicing his "avocation?"  Does professionalism end at the classroom door even in the face of unfairly or incorrectly applied rules? --- Depending on circumstances and what has transpired. I think all of us have a responsibility to be professional. If anyone of us crosses that line the local organization should be stepping in.

[ETXZebra]

In the first case , simply arguing is not the reason the coach would be ejected.  The officials should be reprimanded by his chapter’s Board for mis-applying the rule and any penalty they see fit to impose.
 
In the case of judgment, again the coach would have to do more than argue to be ejected.  The official should not be reprimanded for a judgment call, but I feel there should be a review.
 
I think the adjudication of the coach should be handled differently from that of an official, not because of his position but because of his actions.  As I said the reason for ejection was more than just the argument and his actions constituted his ejection and he must deal with the consequences. 

[DallasLJ]

I think your question is wrongly focused -- you are trying to determine in what circumstance should the official be punished or subject to some form of punishment.

  The answer is never from the UIL.  If the official commits an assualt - the police and courts will take care of that.  If the official violates an ethical code of conduct, his chapter or TASO should resolve it.  However, if the official botches a judgment call or rule enforcement -- then the answer is one of continued confidence in the officials (independent contractors) ability to do the job.  The schools already have all the tools they need to deal with that -- simply do not select that official or crew to work your games again.  Schools either select crews or have a scratch list.  Just as if the school district hired a plumber to do a job, and was dissatisfied with the work -- hire a different plumber next time.  This is a self-correcting problem, and does not need the UIL to fix it.

[Arbitrator]

I think your question is wrongly focused -- you are trying to determine in what circumstance should the official be punished or subject to some form of punishment.

  The answer is never from the UIL.  If the official commits an assualt - the police and courts will take care of that.  If the official violates an ethical code of conduct, his chapter or TASO should resolve it.  However, if the official botches a judgment call or rule enforcement -- then the answer is one of continued confidence in the officials (independent contractors) ability to do the job.  The schools already have all the tools they need to deal with that -- simply do not select that official or crew to work your games again.  Schools either select crews or have a scratch list.  Just as if the school district hired a plumber to do a job, and was dissatisfied with the work -- hire a different plumber next time.  This is a self-correcting problem, and does not need the UIL to fix it.

 

Agreed! The Coach however is not going to be ejected unless he uses blue language that can be heard by members of his team, staff, et. al. If he is, then the UIL has the available remedies to deal with such an infraction. But as far as the official misapplying a rule, that is his chapter's and TASO's business. But in the court of public opinion amongst the subscribing coaches to that officials chapter, there will probably be diminishing returns on the number of games received by that official.

If the official doesn't offer an apology for his actions, then his chapter and or TASO should  remedy the situation and have the official offer one up. JMO!   

[Etref]

 

Agreed! The Coach however is not going to be ejected unless he uses blue language that can be heard by members of his team, staff, et. al. If he is, then the UIL has the available remedies to deal with such an infraction. But as far as the official misapplying a rule, that is his chapter's and TASO's business. But in the court of public opinion amongst the subscribing coaches to that officials chapter, there will probably be diminishing returns on the number of games received by that official.

If the official doesn't offer an apology for his actions, then his chapter and or TASO should  remedy the situation and have the official offer one up. JMO!  

That applies to you or I and I think most on this board. However, there are some officials out there (not good ones) that might eject the coach just because.....................


Each case should be looked at by TASO and the local chapter. I have no problem informing UIL of what was done the same as they should have no problem not pressuring TASO or the chapter to take a specific action.

The coach ejection should be looked at only if it was a case like I mentioned above and the local chapter would know the official and the coach and would be in the best position to make a determination.

[Welpe]

If I knowingly kick a call, I will probably give a coach a little more leeway but he doesn't get a no-limit license to be a raving Adam-Henry.  If he comports himself in a way that he deserves to be ejected, then that ejection should be considered righteous.  The official misapplying the rule, having poor judgment, etc should be handled as a separate matter.

Quite simply, two wrongs don't make a right.

[El Macman]

Schools either select crews or have a scratch list. 

Works fine in THEORY only. If selections or scratches were made on purely objective evaluations of an offical's performance, no issue. But that simply ain't the case. I'd venture an educated guess that in excess of 98% of scratches are based on irrational reactions to correct calls that simply don't go in favor of that team. Selections also are based on whether or not a coach thinks he has any influence on the crew.
That's not a good system. Never has been, never will be. And, if UIL takes over, you'll be stuck with it forever. Coaches/teams must be taken out of the selection process. The public doesn't get to choose the police officers on duty at any given time; defendents don't get to pick prosecutors, judges or juries. Same concept. 
Accountability? Ok. A mutually objective system of evaluating a call, an incident or an entire game must, and CAN, be developed that will allow a coach/school or offiical to have a grievance reviewed and judgment rendered. The consequences of the judgment for both parties could be anything from simple acknowledgement of correctness or error, to remedial training, to suspension, to banishment - applies equally to either party. No one should have an issue with accountability, as long as accountability applies to all parties, and there is an objective system of redress.

[Coby]

Works fine in THEORY only. If selections or scratches were made on purely objective evaluations of an offical's performance, no issue. But that simply ain't the case. I'd venture an educated guess that in excess of 98% of scratches are based on irrational reactions to correct calls that simply don't go in favor of that team. Selections also are based on whether or not a coach thinks he has any influence on the crew.
That's not a good system. Never has been, never will be. And, if UIL takes over, you'll be stuck with it forever. Coaches/teams must be taken out of the selection process. The public doesn't get to choose the police officers on duty at any given time; defendents don't get to pick prosecutors, judges or juries. Same concept. 
Accountability? Ok. A mutually objective system of evaluating a call, an incident or an entire game must, and CAN, be developed that will allow a coach/school or offiical to have a grievance reviewed and judgment rendered. The consequences of the judgment for both parties could be anything from simple acknowledgement of correctness or error, to remedial training, to suspension, to banishment - applies equally to either party. No one should have an issue with accountability, as long as accountability applies to all parties, and there is an objective system of redress.

Without coaches picking you will have chapter politics replace coaching politics.  The best thing about picks is if a coach complains you can say, coach you picked them dont pick them again.

You can add more value to the crew selection process and quantify the selection process if you would like.  One of the many funny things about the UIL takeover is their belief that they will add accountability to officiating.  The coaches currently have 2 accountability measures currently at their disposal the green UIL cards and the zebraware evaluations.  What percent of the green cards actually get turned back in?  What does the UIL do with that data???  So you are telling me that the one piece of accountability that coaches have at their disposal they do not use???  But they want to create more accountability measures that will not be used???
TASO local chapters control the zebraware evaluations.  The local chapter should post the overall season score of the individual crew members for coaches to view.  I would really like to see the correlation between scores and number of games once the data is made public.  Right now the only correlation is crew division # and number of games.

[James]

Regarding an official that has overstepped their brief (or one who has gone bat-s**t crazy) and needs to be disciplined.
It is possible for the school to scratch them, but what if there is a big problem and that person shouldn't be on the field any more. Does the UIL or TASO have a license that could be pulled to indicate that official is no longer accredited?
Obviously a question from an out-of-stater.

[El Macman]

Regarding an official that has overstepped their brief (or one who has gone bat-s**t crazy) and needs to be disciplined.
It is possible for the school to scratch them, but what if there is a big problem and that person shouldn't be on the field any more. Does the UIL or TASO have a license that could be pulled to indicate that official is no longer accredited?
Obviously a question from an out-of-stater.

No "license," but their membership in TASO can be suspended or terminated. It has happened.
In the days of Bailey Marshall and Bill Farney, their support was such that if a school wanted to use non-TASO officials, they wanted an explanation as to why, and there needed to be be a damned good reason. Rarely, if ever, happened. So suspension or termination from TASO effectively excluded folks from working UIL sports.
Today, just promise to rub the UIL's back or other body parts and you'll get a championship game!

[El Macman]

Without coaches picking you will have chapter politics replace coaching politics.

Better that than coaches picking based upon who will give them preferential treatment. Better for officials to be in control of their own destiny and integrity than being controlled by the contestants, don't ya think? The conflict of interest is mind-boggling. You'd never let John Q. Citizen hand pick the patrol officers he wants on duty at a given time. You'd never allow a defendant to hand pick his prosecutor, judge or jury. These are identical circumstances.

Assignment politics can be mitigated by having a uniform, state-wide assignment policy, with tight guidelines for making assignments. Deviations from the guidelines might be possible, but the conditions would need to be clear and compelling, and approved by an oversight group (within each chapter). Guidelines should include criteria for number of varsity assignments per week per official (regular season and playoffs), criteria and procedures for creating fixed crews (for those working in crews), criteria for number of assignments to specific schools, etc., etc.

Officials simply have to be independent of the contestants. Despite the fact that the system was flawed and fraught with the potential for conflict of interest, the previous TASO - UIL system was "OK" during previous UIL administrations, because there was a mutual trust and respect between the two entities. They needed each other (still do), but they let each other do their part at arms-length. The current UIL administration is trying to bear-hug TASO, and it simply must be stopped.

[rickref]

"TASO local chapters control the zebraware evaluations.  The local chapter should post the overall season score of the individual crew members for coaches to view.  I would really like to see the correlation between scores and number of games once the data is made public.  Right now the only correlation is crew division # and number of games."

Coby, problem with coaches evalautaions is they are not usually a bona fide correct evealuation. Many times one call can land someone a 40 even though they got it right. They do these more often only when mad and hardly ever to provide positive feedback. They also are not experts on mechanics and judgement as we are not experts on their decision making. The only good thing on evaluations you can gauge is if a crew keeps getting bad scores then something is wrong. If they get good scores consitently they are doing sometghng right. Far too many times I see bad scores where coaches are steamed on one call.

[Coby]

Coby, problem with coaches evalautaions is they are not usually a bona fide correct evealuation. Many times one call can land someone a 40 even though they got it right. They do these more often only when mad and hardly ever to provide positive feedback. They also are not experts on mechanics and judgement as we are not experts on their decision making. The only good thing on evaluations you can gauge is if a crew keeps getting bad scores then something is wrong. If they get good scores consitently they are doing sometghng right. Far too many times I see bad scores where coaches are steamed on one call.

You can account for IDIOT coaches and adjust the zebraware policy.  You look at the data and see if a coach looses he always give 40's then you remove all of that coaches grades.  If the data shows that if a coach wins he always gives 100's you adjust their grades.  Say for instance a crew does 10 games and gets back 15 evaluations.  Have it be chapter policy to remove the highest and lowest score if you receive more then 10 evaluations.  Remove the 2 highest and lowest scores if you receive between 20 and 30 evaluations etc. etc.

Are coaches evaluations accurate...hell no.  Do they know how to evaluate officials...hell no.  Is it a part of the overall accountability of officials... yes.  Will it make them feel like they have a voice in the process...yes.

To have a state wide evaluation system will cost too much money.  Not only will you have to pay the evaluators but there would be a huge regional bias.  For instance the 3 worse crews in Corpus Christi could grade out to be a top 5 crew in Houston.  Do you evaluate crews or individual members?  Show me a plan for evaluating everyone that is equitable.  There are too many regional quirks that make it not possible.  Dont get me wrong I wish it was possible.

[Etref]

Last year my crew received only 4 evaluations on Zebra. Two from winning and two from loosing coaches. Not a very accurate assessment.

The "green" cards are even worse. I think we got back 2 of those and they were duplicates of the Zebra evaluations.

There really is no "good" way to do evaluations short of spending a ton of cash to employ and army of retrired officials who know what they are doing. That is if they are willing to give up their time to do them. TASO or UIL does not have the money to do that on more than a limited basis. The main factor in  the evaluations is finding folks with the time and ability. College guys can sometimes help but most of them have to be on the road to their Saturday game and cannot help on Friday nights.

Chapter politics is another thing that will not change. Most try to avoid and some assigners do a good job but it always creeps in. Even the assignor is perfectly justified in making an assignment, someone will think they should have had the game but "politics" took it away from him.

Coaches selections are equally suspect. Coaches make the selections or scratches for a variety of reasons, some valid and some not.

No matter what method is used to assign games at this level there will be complaints about the way it was done.

Just my $.02

[texref (TX)]

TASO local chapters control the zebraware evaluations.  The local chapter should post the overall season score of the individual crew members for coaches to view.  I would really like to see the correlation between scores and number of games once the data is made public.  Right now the only correlation is crew division # and number of games.

Assigners in Zebra-Ware have the ability to display evaluations by a number of ways, by team, evaluator, official. Crew, class and number of games is not the only way to display.

Posting or not posting is a decision that is made by each chapter.

[rickref]

Last year my crew received only 4 evaluations on Zebra. Two from winning and two from loosing coaches. Not a very accurate assessment.

The "green" cards are even worse. I think we got back 2 of those and they were duplicates of the Zebra evaluations.

There really is no "good" way to do evaluations short of spending a ton of cash to employ and army of retrired officials who know what they are doing. That is if they are willing to give up their time to do them. TASO or UIL does not have the money to do that on more than a limited basis. The main factor in  the evaluations is finding folks with the time and ability. College guys can sometimes help but most of them have to be on the road to their Saturday game and cannot help on Friday nights.

Chapter politics is another thing that will not change. Most try to avoid and some assigners do a good job but it always creeps in. Even the assignor is perfectly justified in making an assignment, someone will think they should have had the game but "politics" took it away from him.

Coaches selections are equally suspect. Coaches make the selections or scratches for a variety of reasons, some valid and some not.

No matter what method is used to assign games at this level there will be complaints about the way it was done.

Just my $.02

I agree with Rick here.

Well put.

[slo8140]

The one thing that I think is missing in Texas High School officiating across all sports is a good evaluation process. Regardless of the sport, we are typically never evaluated. We are screamed at when we make "bad" calls and congratulated by the winning team for calling a "good game."

I have been doing this for a while now. 11 years in baseball plus 9 years in football (I also did 4 years of basketball) and I only worked for one chapter that truly evaluated their officials. I want to get better with each game I call. It is really hard when you are never getting any feedback from anyone that has actually seen you call a game. We need some type of evaluation system...I don't know what it would look like, but it would be something that showed everyone around that we are striving to get better and not simply calling the games assigned.

A perfect example is a game that my crew called in Football last year. We had a very rough game. We misapplied some rules and were just not good that night. A senior official was in the stands watching the game. When we asked for feedback he said that we did a good job. We did not. It is time to start hurting people's feelings and making sure that we have the good officials in the games that they are needed in and the younger guys in the games they can handle.

Our schedules should be based on our officiating ability, not longevity, not who you know. The only chapter that ever did it that way that I worked in had a great evaluation/training system. That is why the that chapter gets so many playoff games for their size.

We need some way to be evaluated. It would be better for us, better for the coaches, and better for the fans and players.

[Etref]

You are correct, we do need much more constructive criticism The problem most smaller chapters have is numbers. Who will do it. Most of those who retire do so to move onto other phases of life and not devote their time to officiating. The chapters do not have the luxury of taking a good crew off the board that night to have them go evaluate other officials. There are sometimes college officials who will go watch a crew or a friend and offer some words but even that is not enough.

I do not profess to know the answer. Heck, I have been in three different chapters in 26 years and they all have had the same question. How do we do effective evaluations. In Amarillo, we had a few retired guys back then who could evaluate but it was a hit and miss proposition. In Dallas, they came up with a system of evaluators who would look at crews who made a request. But with 50+ crews and 4 evaluators working only a few nights a year it was again hit and miss. Now working in Tyler we are still searching for the magic way to do evaluations here. We have about 135 officials on the roster. 100 of those are on crews, about 15 of them are off on Fridays to watch their kids play or march or whatever. The rest are mainly 1-2 years guys.

So again, who does the evaluation? Some may be able to talk to a retired or a college guy who can come by and watch the game to give him some pointers. Others may not be so lucky.

I was excited about using HUDL and hoped that we could see each others game films and offer critique but that kind of fell by the wayside. The films TXMike puts up are great but he is speaking mostly to the choir in that many of the ones who really need to see what is on the films are not on this site or others like it.

Like I said, I do not have the answer. Hopefully someone out there does.

[El Macman]

The one thing that I think is missing in Texas High School officiating across all sports is a good evaluation process. Regardless of the sport, we are typically never evaluated. We are screamed at when we make "bad" calls and congratulated by the winning team for calling a "good game."

I have been doing this for a while now. 11 years in baseball plus 9 years in football (I also did 4 years of basketball) and I only worked for one chapter that truly evaluated their officials. I want to get better with each game I call. It is really hard when you are never getting any feedback from anyone that has actually seen you call a game. We need some type of evaluation system...I don't know what it would look like, but it would be something that showed everyone around that we are striving to get better and not simply calling the games assigned.

A perfect example is a game that my crew called in Football last year. We had a very rough game. We misapplied some rules and were just not good that night. A senior official was in the stands watching the game. When we asked for feedback he said that we did a good job. We did not. It is time to start hurting people's feelings and making sure that we have the good officials in the games that they are needed in and the younger guys in the games they can handle.

Our schedules should be based on our officiating ability, not longevity, not who you know. The only chapter that ever did it that way that I worked in had a great evaluation/training system. That is why the that chapter gets so many playoff games for their size.

We need some way to be evaluated. It would be better for us, better for the coaches, and better for the fans and players.

Absolutely. Just as with the issue of accountability, the issue of evaluation must be addressed state-wide. TASO must get this done.

[rickref]

"Absolutely. Just as with the issue of accountability, the issue of evaluation must be addressed state-wide. TASO must get this done."

How? That is the magic question.

[TexDoc]

In 24 seasons, I have never put any credence into any coaches evaluations.  What they know about officiating usually fits into a thimble.  Their evaluations are based more on emotion than on objectivity because, quite frankly, they don't know squat about our mechanics or the rules (usually).  

[UHateMe]

99% of coaches have no business evaluating officials.  1% might have a decent idea and are fairly credible.  Being around a coach for most of my life, it never fails that "the officials were terrible", win or lose. 

External observations are best but how many guys get out of officiating and want to continue to be a part?  They get out to do something else in most every circumstance.

The best is getting the "good game" from a coach and then seeing the scorecard. 

Having worked a few sub-varsity contests in my day as the only official with a couple of coaches on the sidelines, I have found they have no desire or intelligence to do what we do.  Many will say just work it alone, but aren't we always told that the playing field is an extension of the classroom?  These guys recieved a crash course, I was the teacher and they failed.   

[Arbitrator]

 

Agreed on the coaches evaluations. The vast majority are definitely more X-and-O-oriented rather than they are toward the rules. However, there are a handful of the coaches that actually know the rules(with no thanks to the Manor Road Crowd) as well as any of our best rules gurus. So never try to bluff those guys on a given rule; doing so may very well come back and take a large bite out your backside!

But overall, the UIL and other Coaches evaluations severely lack in objectivity. I really don't know if there's an answer or if there will ever be one for that particular aspect!   

[texref]

Like most of you I wish our crew could be evaluated every week. The reality is it ain't gonna happen. What we and many other crews have done for years is get DVD's of each of our games (we have a 90%+ return rate). We are our toughest critic. When in doubt I will ask a fellow Official outside the crew to take a look and give us his honest feedback. It's not a perfect system but better than waiting around for someone to put a better system in place.