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Football Officiating => General Discussion => Topic started by: Curious on November 20, 2015, 01:33:29 PM
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From NASO Bulletin 11/19/15. What say ye? (for Ralph):
"Sports officials are being suspended in ever increasing numbers. That fact is indisputable. They are being suspended by leagues, conferences, associations and assigners. One could reasonably infer from this that sports officials are performing worse than before. That conclusion is wrong.
Sports officials are doing a better job than ever and in the most trying and scrutinized circumstances. They are getting more calls correct more often. How do we know that? We know that from the data being amassed.
Yet, there has now developed a clamor about officiating errors. The reason is this: There is video to watch and from that decisions and judgments are formed. Yes, video review/replay has come into its own, an existence underpinned by millions of dollars in investment. Today we bear witness to the return on investment and it isn’t a particularly pretty sight.
It needs to be said that those of us in officiating welcome being held accountable for the decisions we make. That comes with the territory. We are tasked with knowing the rules and enforcing them – not setting them aside through being lax or deciding to “make it up as we go along.” In those two situations, we deserve punishment and, if what we have done has been egregious, the public should be told that we have violated a trust.
We can handle that accountability. But what disturbs us is that errors of judgment made during a contest, whether in fact or fiction, result in the suspending of officials. That trend deserves special attention.
The National Association of Sports Officials believes that, other than as stated above, suspending sports officials is a distinctly bad idea. Mistakes are made in every game by players, coaches and officials. Some have little to no impact and some loom large. We seem to have gotten to the point, as it relates to the officials, that any mistake is to be redressed. No “bad deed” can remain unpunished in the new “openness.”
Setting aside a discussion about the nature of mistakes and which ones warrant sanction, let’s turn the focus to the sanctions themselves. Most sports officials are independent contractors, unlike those in the pro leagues who serve as employees. Employees have collectively bargained rights to appeal punishments. For the 98 percent of officials not at the pro level, they serve at the behest of the assigning agency. Thus, with virtually no bargaining power, those officials have to take what is dished out to them. Today, suspensions are being dished out.
The knee-jerk reaction to a real or a believed mistake is to publically suspend. There is only one rational answer for such a move — retribution. Suspending an official will not lead to better performance by that official or the others on staff. It will bring fear into the room. That drives morale down. Suspensions make no sense, other than in a PR director’s playbook. Suspensions are a public dressing down.
We believe a much saner and productive course would be to protect the standing and ethos of sports officials while at the same time holding them accountable. That can be achieved through other options: levee a fine for demonstrated poor performance; reassign underperformers; evaluate the total body of work at the close of the season and then, with proper documentation, release those officials that clearly have not met a standard of performance, subject to an agreed-upon appeal process.
The goal should be to motivate officials to do their best while, at the same time, tending to their psychic wellbeing. Good morale better builds a superior product than a hammer. Officials today understand they can be replaced. If officials continue to be suspended for innocuous reasons, or as is often the case, for reasonable judgments, it should be expected that efforts will get energized to find a way for officials to feel that they in fact are stakeholders in sports, that they are more than public-relations pawns. Treating officials as public-relations pawns does not improve officiating or contribute to the integrity of organized sports at any level.
November 19, 2015"