#3 gets me a lot. These officials are all neutral arbiters. They are not out to "get one team". Sometimes one team simply commits more fouls than the other team......and sometimes that disparity is massive.
If not for one crew that I see fairly often, I would agree.
We have a local crew, which I mentioned above, where one of the officials has his own company and works at several local schools, but at one particular school that he works at, he is friends with the players, interacts with them on social media, buys tickets to watch their games when he is not reffing, etc.
That team is usually not good, but when he refs them, the fouls are lopsided, in favor of that team. When "reaching" across a dribblers body, a player makes contact with the dribbler and knocks her down to the floor, several times a game, yet no foul is called.
When the other team does this (I have watched him red them against other teams and it's the same way), a foul is called. I have sat with one of my friends that refs varsity high school games and he can't believe what he sees.
He agrees. Very biased reffing for that team. It's crazy that when the same ref (and crew) refs other teams, they are actually very good refs. That's what drives me crazy. It should never feel as if a ref is "helping" one team or the other.
Call the game fair for both teams. If something is a foul on one side of the court, it had better be a foul on the other side of the court.
IMO, this crew, (well, the one ref in the crew I guess) shouldn't be allowed to ref games for schools he works for. Our AD will not hire the local refs that have either graduated from our school or have had kids in our school system.
I get it. We have an extreme lack of refs (due to not just fans being a-holes), but it's not fair to the teams that have to deal with this biased reffing.
Having reffed elementary basketball and coached, I understand how difficult it can be to see everything that happens on the court, so I tend to be the guy that quiets down our crowd when they get upset over a call that was actually a correct call, although I admit that I am just as guilty at times at getting upset at the refs on the heat of the moment.
The refs don't deserve that sort of treatment and I 99% agree with every poster in this thread and their comments. I am glad the refs are getting more money per game now than they were getting 10-20 years ago. They deserve good pay for what they have to deal with.
I wish high school coaches would help get their players more involved with reffing the younger students (elementary teams have many games and tournaments) so these kids would possibly feel comfortable taking on a reffing position when they get older. They need to start somewhere.