Thoughts on Fixing the Officials Shortage

So, I wrote something recently on the problem with refereeing and the shortage of officials across sports and in one forum, a gentleman named Derek D. had a comment, basically, “Yeah–but what are the solutions?” I appreciate that because it is easy to complain and solutions aren’t always easy to find. I was working on this already–but wanted to give Derek a shout-out because he’s right. If you’re gonna complain, you have an obligation to work on solutions.

Fixes for officiating shortages:

• Change registration fees. Instead of paying money up front, associations could charge a ‘tax’–and take $1-2 from every match. Doing this would make it easy to register as an official.
  • Unfair to refs working all the time? Cap the tax at $100.
  • Unfair to refs? Charge a $1 ‘service fee’ to every match a tournament holds and make the host pay it then eliminate registration fees for officials.
  • You could make the ‘tax’ function only for officials in the first three years of doing it…this way they could see what they think before committing thoroughly.
• One organization/clearinghouse to handle all officials’ paperwork.
  • (This will never happen–but it would make life easier on new officials)
• Bonus pay/honors for officials who recruit new officials…extra bonus for people under 30.
  • Make it that once that new ref has worked ‘X’ # of matches, the official who recruited the newbie gets paid up one rank per match for the rest of the season.
    • Make it so the recruiter gets $1/match of the recruited ref’s pay as a finder fee. This means if I could recruit 3-4 refs to stick with the sport…I could bank some money!!…and not be hurting people.
• Referee assigners cannot remain in a job more than three years. It has to rotate.
• Referees should not have to work matches for free in order to be evaluated/receive promotion. This is indentured servitude.
  • You could make registration fees higher for promoted ranks. After all, pay is higher for those ranks already.
• For VB, ‘OPEN’ matches get an R1/2. ‘NATIONAL’ gets an R1. Lower levels–coaches officiate. –this helps the VB ref squeeze currently, but it isn’t a long-term viable solultion.
• If an official has to work a match before 9am or after 9pm, they should be comped housing/per diem as part of their pay.
  • This is for soccer, baseball, softball. With baseball/softball, some facilities schedule games to begin at *1AM* or *5AM*. Unacceptable.
• Standardized apparel across NFHSA / AAU / relevant travel-ball organizations
• Create reciprocal registration agreements between state associations. EX: If I register as a ref in Illinois, I can work contests in any adjacent state.
• VB only: Make USAV use NFHSA VB rules–or vice-versa. There should be one rules system to rule them all.
• Evaluations should be based on ‘did they get the calls right’ rather than ‘you need to have your arm bent an extra 15° when beckoning for a serve.’
• Governing bodies NEED to put the hammer down on spectators abusing officials.
• Governing bodies NEED to put the hammer down on coaches abusing officials.
  • A youth coach getting ejected from a contest (after a review) should be suspended for one month. Two ejections in a two-year span means suspension for a year.
  • Why not fine teams with abusive parents?
    • Create a national listing of incidents–list the travel-ball team and whether it was their athletes, staff, or fans.
• Increase the pay.
  • Many sports’ officials, after expenses, would make more money walking the floor at Menard’s or being on the counter at McDonald’s than they get from officiating a game.
• Aggressively go after the Old Boys Network with assigning.
• Have officials with less than 3-4 years experience wear something obvious that denotes them as ‘apprentice referee’. Increase penalties for coaches/fans who are abusive towards inexperienced officials.
• Eliminate the need for shirts with branding on them or available from limited sources. Let officials purchase simple, plain white polos (or egg blue or prison gray) instead of overpaying for shirts with embroidery saying “Official” or such on the side.
• Require tournament hosts to station a staff member at each court to deal with fans.
• Make sure officials are supported/have the authority to deal with unsportsmanlike fans.
  • Start awarding points to the other team
  • Force the coach of the offending team to leave the bench and stand by the parent. The coach is not permitted to sub or say anything while with that parent–the players are on their own.

Speaking of problems–you should follow this link. It’s a real thing and more important than officiating: Whistles.