Is this new?

[TexDoc]

I'm not even going to waste my time picking apart his idiotic reply.  He's either joking, or one of the biggest idiots I have ever seen.

[JasonTX]

Here's the email I sent to Mr Cousins and the response from Mr Timmons:

"Dear Sir,
Who put this evaluation together? https://www.uiltexas.org/form/officials-evaluation/submit.php?sport=Football

This is probably the worst evaluation form I think I've ever seen.  Why is virtually every question asked in the negative?  Do you really value a "fan" or "family member" evaluation on the officials rules knowledge?  This is a joke right?

Best regards,

Brad Marcum

RESPONSE:

Brad,
If you study the evaluation and the way the questions are posed you will find that the wording allows for a 50/50 positive to negative scenario.  Asking questions in this manner does not allow an evaluator to randomly select all disagree or agree without thoroughly reading the evaluation and selecting the appropriate answer.  This evaluation is a national first with regard to the evaluation of ALL sports officials.  The design and creation of this evaluation was meant to apply to ALL sports so anyone could give their opinion based on their own experience, even if their experience was limited in knowledge and/or substance.  I have found in my experience there is always something to be gained from anyone with an opinion, be it positive or negative, and although I agree that most fans do not posses the capacity to give a legitimate evaluation, I do believe that they could have something to give even if all they pick up on is an officials "attitude". 


We have to constantly strive to put ourselves in a position to improve and this ground breaking evaluation is a great start to allow officials to perhaps get perspectives from those they don’t often get to hear from.  So to answer your question this is NOT a joke nor is it a joke for officials to realize there is something to learn each and every time we step out on to the playing field.  Thanks for all you do for the student-athletes of Texas. 


If you would like to call to discuss any of these issues please feel free to do so!
--
Tony Timmons
UIL Director of Officials
512-471-5883
ttimmons@uiltexas.org
www.uiltexas.org

Wow.  I can't believe he would expect something to be gained from a fan.  We have all been fans prior to being officials and I will guarantee you that had this evaluation been available my opinion back then as a fan would have been based solely on whether my team won.  That is how fans view officials.  They lack any sense of what good officiating is.  Think of how many times you've been "booed" for make the correct call fully supported by film.  In their mind the Ref still sucked.  This evaluation form looked like good paper shredder material to me.

[TexDoc]

If he truly believes that something can be gained from "evaluations" from everyone and anyone at a game, then when will we get the chance to evaluate coaches as officials?

[Welpe]

I wonder if these fan evaluations will be taken more seriously than our UIL incident reports?

[Arbitrator]

 

  "... and although I agree that most fans do not possess the capacity to give a legitimate evaluation, I do believe that they could have something to give even if all they pick up on is an officials "attitude".


We have to constantly strive to put ourselves in a position to improve and this ground breaking evaluation is a great start to allow officials to perhaps get perspectives from those they don’t often get to hear from.  So to answer your question this is NOT a joke nor is it a joke for officials to realize there is something to learn each and every time we step out on to the playing field.  Thanks for all you do for the student-athletes of Texas. 


If you would like to call to discuss any of these issues please feel free to do so!
--
Tony Timmons
UIL Director of Officials
512-471-5883
ttimmons@uiltexas.org
www.uiltexas.org


Rumor has it that the illustrious  "UIL Director of Officials" actually saw a football game once! But while he's been rather busy lately sitting in  Uncle Charlie's lap, he has to do something to earn his keep while waiting for those Civil Court hearings to commence. He must have got bored and put himself together a nice encompassing form where ticket-buyers situated way up in the 57th row can tell him all about the "attitudes" of the game officials. Now that's something the NCAA must have blatently overlooked on their evaluation forms.

  Tiny Tim: Do the State of Texas an immense favor and resign immediately! After all, you'd save us a lot of our needed state taxpayer dollars in doing so. It's fairly evident that if you run those West Texas inns in much the same way that you "direct officials" over there on Manor Road, then the inn business should have gone down the tubes a very long time ago!   

[TXMike]

" I have found in my experience there is always something to be gained from anyone with an opinion, be it positive or negative, and although I agree that most fans do not posses the capacity to give a legitimate evaluation, I do believe that they could have something to give even if all they pick up on is an officials "attitude".


Yep, Mr T, there were plenty of us zebras who were able to "pick up on attitude" when you graced us with your presence.  Unfortuantely we were not given a form to send in to the UIL

[TexDoc]

" I have found in my experience there is always something to be gained from anyone with an opinion, be it positive or negative, "

Isn't this a contradiction?  How can you gain from the negative?  I thought you "gained" from the positive.  How can an uninformed comment from a fan help me as an official?  I'm sure the NFL will be using this form next since it is so wonderful.

[BankerRef]

So does the content of the submitted form make its way to the official being evaluated so that we can "gain" something from the untrained, uninformed, and biased "opinion" or is it just kept in the UIL's secret files somewhere?

[williebe]

Bankerref from what my chap sec told me he gets thie evual in an email so take it what its worth, like all evual we get.   

[Arbitrator]

 

I just recently received my UIL Evaluation(one coach only) from my TASO Houston Football Chapter Secretary that was attached to an email from him. I'm tellin' you: that  Lil' Tony sure does know how to use that 'puter of his! And if you don't exactly believe him, just ask him!   

[JasonTX]

I'm surprised they don't require a paid membership to be able to evaluate.

[Arbitrator]

I'm surprised they don't require a paid membership to be able to evaluate.

 

Please don't give the  Manor Road Crowd any fresh new ideas like that! After all, it doesn't exactly take a clarivoyant to see that they're busily scurrying around for all the money that they can find, regardless of whether it's state taxpayer funding, coerced contributions, or UIL officials fees!   

[allen]

Maybe you guys need to read his reply again.

This is ground breaking stuff.

The NFL should adopt this any day now.

[TXMike]

This is about accountability men.  We need to be accountable to Billy Bob, the drunk 45 year old who stilll wears his HS jersey to the games; and to Maggie Sue, the doting momma who's little boy is a superstar and who was not protected from being tackled by those boys who are much larger than he; and to Sammy Sportswriter who has covered HS football for his local fishwrap for the last 5 years after he graduated HS and who obviously "knows the game".  It is high time we stop thinking we are the only ones who have a clue about the rules and  how the game should be officiated and start understanding how much all these other great folks know.

[Arbitrator]

This is about accountability men.  We need to be accountable to Billy Bob, the drunk 45 year old who stilll wears his HS jersey to the games; and to Maggie Sue, the doting momma who's little boy is a superstar and who was not protected from being tackled by those boys who are much larger than he; and to Sammy Sportswriter who has covered HS football for his local fishwrap for the last 5 years after he graduated HS and who obviously "knows the game".  It is high time we stop thinking we are the only ones who have a clue about the rules and  how the game should be officiated and start understanding how much all these other great folks know.

 

Sounds a great deal like the Supes and Minions of Manor Road who seemingly tend to reserve most of those UIL leadership positions for such over-educated idiots like both of the  Good UIL Drs.  , and with a  Dancing Monkey who has no apparent experience in the football arena, other than occasionally supervising a PE intramural touch-football game as a substitute, thrown-in for good measure. Common sense, I'm afraid, is just not a prerequisite for employment over there on Manor Road!

Obviously, it must be pretty effective leadership, however, as evidenced by all of those  lemmings from basketball as well as a few of the other mundane sports that have gleefully followed that "UIL leadership" either through coercion, scare tactics, or the persistent promises of UIL dome covers, down the road and off into the cavernous UIL abyss!   

[James]

Isn't this a contradiction?  How can you gain from the negative?  I thought you "gained" from the positive. 

Well as long as you take something away with you after reading the evaluations... 

[TxSkyBolt]

Maybe you guys need to read his reply again.

This is ground breaking stuff.

The NFL should adopt this any day now.

And don't forget it's also a "National first"

[WABill]

Well as long as you take something away with you after reading the evaluations...

With hunting season upon us, we now have some spare arse wipe for the deer blind, quail field, fishing shack, etc.  Thanks uil for providing bird cage liner.

[BankerRef]

And don't forget it's also a "National first"

I suspect this may be a "National only".

[Arbitrator]

 

Methinks that it is high time for everyone to start sending in copies of  Timmons response letter to their respective elected state Senators and Representatives in Austin; if for no other reason than to vividly demonstrate to them the "bang of the buck" that that $80K salary of Tony's is getting for them. And to make it a little more interesting, how that $215K annual outlay to the  Good UIL Dr. is being well spent on his serious lack of supervision from his Manor Road lair thus letting UIL relations with both the Officials and Coaches of Texas denigrate into a  crap-storm of unheralded proportions.

They refuse to acknowledge or even communicate with TASO. To that end, the lawsuit with them might be down the road a tad, but our legislators have a right to immediately know how some of the state funding is being handled by these power hungry morons for the severe shortage of leadership that they have so ardently exhibited. 

[CenTexTM]

What is their goal?  I think most new officials want feedback and evaluations by people who are knowledgeable, and wouldn't even mind a coach offering feedback if done in a professional manner and reasonable decibels after a game.  This just seems to facilitate marring an official for a team's loss when most of the potential evaluators would have no way of knowing how an official actually rates on these criteria.  TASO is already top-heavy with division 1s and several chapters often have more games than they can staff, and it seems like retention of new officials is pretty low.  This form is almost an overt attempt to make the experience negative rather than improve an official's performance.  Listening to the coaches and crowd jabber from the sideline is part of the game, but having to respond or even read something like this would make me wonder if the 200 mile round-trip for a six-man JV game is really worth it.

[110]

Total head-scratcher. I have the luxury of covering multiple sports as a course of the journalism career, and for the most part, I've found that most parents, fans, spectators and a significant fraction of players and coaches haven't got the foggiest idea what the hell the rules are, or how officials work - and therefore, their opinions are utterly useless.

Then you have the issue with fans not even SEEING stuff straight. I remember clearly watching a playoff hockey game where a puck came about halfway out over the blueline, so that half the puck covered the white ice of the neutral zone and the other half the blue of the blueline.

All the parents of the team in their own defensive zone called for an offside, then berated the official for "missing the call." When I, the guy writing for the paper in the area the same team played in, explained the offside rule, most folks said they (a) didn't know that rule and that (b) it was irrelevant, as the puck was "clearly" six inches over the line: even though it wasn't.

I recently had a polite discussion with a soccer parent who wanted to know why I (a first-year soccer referee) hadn't called an "obvious" hand ball. I explained what the determinants were for such a thing (a ball on a predictable vector striking a hand/forearm that was moved in a manner as to intercept, or a ball on a predictable vector striking a hand/forearm that is/was in an un-natural position) ... It just so happened that she - and half the people playing soccer - think any combination of ball+hand=foul.

I've seen lots of things like this to support my view that most fans are woefully ill-equipped to evaluate officials. Baseball outs that were clearly outs that fans of the team put out said were not outs, and suchlike. Ergo, any fan-based evaluation tool is, frankly, fecal matter.

[TXMike]

I was only half joking in my earlier post about accountability.  Let's face it...that has been their mantra throughout this ordeal.  They likely see this as a way to show the Superintendents that they are looking for accountability.  Never mind that they likely know (unless they are truly ignorant) how useless and unreliable this tool will be.  They can put on the show of "Look what we are doing".  We know they have "their people" doing evaluations all over the state.  Now they have an online tool those evaluators can use to submit their feedback.  Maybe we will learn just what the qualifications are for these "secret" evaluators hiding out at the games.  Me thinks loyalty to the UIL is probably the only criterion they care about. 

[Welpe]

After tonight's game, I think a certain crew chief on here is going to fill out one of these things on me for being a walking bad luck charm. 

[Coby]

Total head-scratcher. I have the luxury of covering multiple sports as a course of the journalism career, and for the most part, I've found that most parents, fans, spectators and a significant fraction of players and coaches haven't got the foggiest idea what the hell the rules are, or how officials work - and therefore, their opinions are utterly useless.

Then you have the issue with fans not even SEEING stuff straight. I remember clearly watching a playoff hockey game where a puck came about halfway out over the blueline, so that half the puck covered the white ice of the neutral zone and the other half the blue of the blueline.

All the parents of the team in their own defensive zone called for an offside, then berated the official for "missing the call." When I, the guy writing for the paper in the area the same team played in, explained the offside rule, most folks said they (a) didn't know that rule and that (b) it was irrelevant, as the puck was "clearly" six inches over the line: even though it wasn't.

I recently had a polite discussion with a soccer parent who wanted to know why I (a first-year soccer referee) hadn't called an "obvious" hand ball. I explained what the determinants were for such a thing (a ball on a predictable vector striking a hand/forearm that was moved in a manner as to intercept, or a ball on a predictable vector striking a hand/forearm that is/was in an un-natural position) ... It just so happened that she - and half the people playing soccer - think any combination of ball+hand=foul.

I've seen lots of things like this to support my view that most fans are woefully ill-equipped to evaluate officials. Baseball outs that were clearly outs that fans of the team put out said were not outs, and suchlike. Ergo, any fan-based evaluation tool is, frankly, fecal matter.

You realize you just posted something about hockey, and soccer on a Texas Football board right???  Here is the tie in....  having parents comment about football rules is about as stupid as Texas football officials comment on hockey rules???