How Do Other Conferences Pay for Refs?

by **Dan Wishengrad** on Sun Sep 23, 2007 1:33 pm

The PNCLL will be wrestling with the dilemna of how to pay for ref game fees and travel. Currently all costs are split between both teams (when two PNCL teams play each other), but when a PNCLL team hosts an OOC opponent the home team pays all ref costs.

There will certainly be support from our geographically isolated schools who have no local refs to work their games to continue this system, which essentially means that schools near the big cities where refs live will subsidize the costs of sending refs hundreds of miles away. The alternative is to have the home team bear all costs while the visitor simply pays the cost of travel and lodging. I have heard that this is how some other conferences handle the fees and travel.

I would appreciate hearing from representatives of the other conferences how they bill for officials' game fees and travel, and this info will be shared as part of our discussions and debate at our League meeting next Saturday.

**Sponsor**

by **Andy Sharp** on Sun Sep 23, 2007 2:47 pm

One arm and one leg at a time. :evil:

Home team is billed for everything in the CCLA.

by **SDSULAX** on Sun Sep 23, 2007 3:51 pm

The WCLL does it the same way, WCLL teams splitting the costs, when an out of conference team comes to play the WCLL team is billed the full cost, any reimbursement from the visiting team should be worked out in advance with the hosting team before scheduling the game. Something to think about before admitting teams way out on the fringes of your conference. It works out for the good of the conference, otherwise the member teams in geographically isolated places have another hurdle to overcome besides the time and costs to travel to them.

by **cjwilhelmi** on Mon Sep 24, 2007 11:15 am

GRLC bills the home team for all charges. If hosting a neutral game the home team is billed for everything. If a visiting team (whether OOC or In Conference) is going to pay for any of the cost they pay the home team directly.

Yes it sucks for teams in areas without refs but they know that this charge is coming and schedule accordingly. It also adds a huge incentive for these teams to try and find refs that can go through ref training and the like.

Honestly I don't think that it is fair to ask a team to travel a bunch of hours (to a team that is not near anything, ie refs), pay for travel, food and lodging and then ask them to pick up part of the bill on refs. If that was it I would limit my in conference games to only the ones that were required and then travel only to teams who would pick up the whole bill. Here in the GRLC we are very spread out (maybe the most out of any of the conferences, I dont know) and doing the payment the way we are doing is encouraging teams to travel from one end of the conference to the other.

As far as billing all the teams. I look up how many games that they are hosting in Arbiter, add a general travel cost and send out the invoice. Teams are told in the fall meeting to expect what the invoice is per game.

by **LaxRef** on Mon Sep 24, 2007 12:07 pm

cjwilhelmi wrote:Yes it sucks for teams in areas without refs but they know that this charge is coming and schedule accordingly. It also adds a huge incentive for these teams to try and find refs that can go through ref training and the like.

This is easier said than done. Even if you find some guys who want to become officials in an isolated area and they're willing to travel somewhere to go through training, they aren't going to be very good for about 3 years, and that's if they get to work a lot of games.

In an isolated area, there probably aren't any high school teams, so if these guys are lucky they're going to get to work, what, 6 games a year. And if they work together, they're not going to have the benefit of an experienced guy telling them what they're doing wrong every game so they can improve more quickly.

Locally, we've been lucky since we have a lot of high school teams here and we do the assigning for HS, freshman, and middle school games in addition to some summer leagues. Some of our first-year officials worked 50 games this year, which means they're getting the chance to develop quickly. Those guys working 6 games per year won't.

In the grand scheme of things, the teams traveling to play those remote teams are probably going to be happier in the short term paying extra for officials than they'd be with a bunch of newbies. What those remote areas really need are some high school teams.

Besides, can those new officials even work MCLA games? I'd think they'd need to be COC officials, although maybe there's a procedure for getting a waiver or something.

by **Karl Lynch** on Mon Sep 24, 2007 3:02 pm

LSA bills all costs to home team. It works real well for us and simplifies for teams' budget.

by **Kevin OBrien** on Mon Sep 24, 2007 6:44 pm

If they're still doing it as they have in years past, the SELC has the teams in a required game (and neutral site) split the cost of the refs and the home team for non-required and OOC gams pay for the refs. Travel for the refs is paid for by all teams as a cost of dues evenly throughout the league. Each Fall meeting each team is required to bring in a nomination form for one new ref or they're fined. Works well for us, but there are a lot of high school teams in most areas around where SELC teams are.

by **Kyle Berggren** on Tue Sep 25, 2007 12:26 pm

One wrinkle Dan didn't mention that applies to Corbin's post, we don't schedule our own games. We have 20ish teams from year to year, & had a limited officials pool (23 sounds correct), so we had a board member do it. Essentially, teams don't have control over their number of home league games, or the dates they play them. We scheduled around OOC games, but could have a maximum of about 5 games going on any given day. We're going to discuss having a league game blackout period to simplify this in the future, but nothing on the books yet.