LaxTV Forums | A Forum About The MCLA

http://www.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/africa/03 ... index.html

Can we use this for lacrosse? I like this idea.

Before this gets out of hand, I will state that I am joking about taking bribes for games. I feel that taking anything from any team other than what is mandated from the league is not acceptable. I not a huge fan of teams paying officials at the lower levels. I rather see all pay checks come from a single league office. I do however love that these statements were made public. Everyone should know that every lacrosse official has shown me that they treat their job with the integrity it deserves.

To paraphrase a teacher of mine from high school, "Bribes are cheerfully accepted, but they need to be large enough to cover all future potential income from officiating that I would lose if caught, plus any legal fees and criminal fines and any civil penalties, plus loss of standing in the community." In other words, you couldn't afford it.

Too late, Tex, they already think we're taking bribes! Had one coach who made the comment (among many others) "How much are they paying you guys?"
I find it humorous that some teams think that the refs care about who wins a game. To me, each game is a blank canvas. The teams do their work, and we are simply there to adjudicate their actions. While we may be able to anticipate that something will occur, you can't call the foul unitl it actually happens. There is also a perception that the number of fouls in a game should be fairly even, and that is also not the case. If one team is dominating on offense, the defensive team will often have more penalties, since the likelihood of a time-serving foul is much greater when you're on D (since tehcnical fouls now become time-serving penalties). As we all know, some teams also play a much more physical, aggressive style of game, and they will also tend to pick up more time in the penalty box. So showing me that penalties were 12 - 5 doesn't mean anything except that your team deserved more penalties.
No bribes needed or accepted - we're there for your playing enjoyment!

What about alumni? People who played in college/hs and then become refs. I'm not saying this is happening now, but the sport is growing. I plan on staying involved by coaching when I graduate, but what about being a ref when I run out of free time. Now if I had to, I think I could ref fairly (I umped when i was younger, and called my little brother out, on my old team on more than one occasion). But I would try not to officiate games with LU if i could help it. I would rather watch anyway. But with the way people can be on the forums for instance could bias grow in the coming years?

I believe that the assignors are aware of any conflicts of interest along those lines, and will schedule accordingly. For instance, I've never reffed a UConn game!

laxfan25 wrote:Too late, Tex, they already think we're taking bribes! Had one coach who made the comment (among many others) "How much are they paying you guys?"

Questioning my integrity in that manner will sit someone in the box for a multiple-minute USC.

yourmom wrote:What about alumni? People who played in college/hs and then become refs. I'm not saying this is happening now, but the sport is growing. I plan on staying involved by coaching when I graduate, but what about being a ref when I run out of free time. Now if I had to, I think I could ref fairly (I umped when i was younger, and called my little brother out, on my old team on more than one occasion). But I would try not to officiate games with LU if i could help it. I would rather watch anyway. But with the way people can be on the forums for instance could bias grow in the coming years?

Hopefully, as we grow there will be more officials and more teams, making it easier to avoid real or perceived conflicts of interest. The biggest problem with officiating for your old school may be that, since you think people will think that you're favoring your old school, you end up going the other way and being a little too hard on them. Better to avoid the conflict completely.

I used to work part-time at a local school, and I used to tell the assignors not to put me on that school's games just to avoid even the appearance of impropriety. However, there were a few times when there was no one else available and I had to work that team's games. I haven't worked there for several years now, though, so I'm willing to work their games again.

I occasionally get assigned games for a local university that I attended for grad school, but not undergrad. I don't see a conflict there; it's a big school and if you disqualified everyone who had some connection to the school there wouldn't be many guys who could do there games. Besides, it's not like I had any contact with the lacrosse team when I sas there.

I think one of my high school teachers put it best when I was trying to bribe her (jokingly) to get 2 more points so i could get bumped up to the next grade. She said "youve gotta pay me enough to retire, and im pretty sure you dont have that much." She was right.