15C.2 Referees
Comments about this discussion:
Started
Borrowing from Freestyle rules on Judegs
"6C.4.1 Selecting Judges A person should not judge an event if he or she is: • A parent, child or sibling of a rider competing in the event. • An individual or team coach, manager, trainer, colleague who is member of the same club speci ed in the registration form, colleague's family etc. of a rider competing in the event. • A sponsor, part of a sponsoring organization or connected to an organization sponsoring any riders in the group to be judged. • A family member of another judge on the judging panel. If the judging pool is too limited by the above criteria, restrictions can be eliminated starting from the bottom of the list and working upward as necessary only until enough judges are available."
I think we should extend section 15C.2 to require independent referees for all elimination/placement games (refs should not be competitors in the same tournament). For pool games we should require at least 2 floor refs from different teams and if the teams are from diverse regions the refs should either be independent, from neutral regions, or mixed from the represented regions.
We should also require referee training for floor refs.
Comment
Such rules make sense but are highly complicated to enforce in practice.
In France, the only solution would be to pay external on-foot basketball referees (and we do sometimes). Indeed, there are relatively few people able to referee a unibasketball game, and all of them are competitors (or coaches). For finals, it is even harder because just a handful of players are good enough to referee such high-speed and high-stake games, and these players are often playing in the best teams.
My point is that you are perfectly right than the refereeing is often an issue in unibasketball (conflict of interest, US/Europe different understanding of the rules/contacts, referees not knowing or enforcing the rules well enough, etc.), but it is very hard to find a good and practical solution.
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I would like to enforce this at Unicon (within a single country there can still be bias but it is less of an issue). I think hiring on-foot coaches should be an expected part of hosting a Unicon.
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I agree to both sentences (although I guess you meant "referees" rather than "coaches" in the second one).
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yes
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I propose we add a section similar to 2D.9 with Unicon specific language here is my proposed change for 15C.2
15C.2 Game Officials
As with Rule Eight of the FIBA Rulebook, game officials shall consist of two or three referees and at least two table officials. Referees shall have all of the responsibilities and powers described in Articles 45, 46, and 47 except for articles covering the referees uniforms. At Unicon, for all playoff games in the A tournament, experienced referees who are not playing in the A tournament and not associated with any teams in the A tournament should be used. For all other games if the referees are players in the same tournament, the referees should be from at least two different teams.
The table officials shall consist of at least one scorer and at least one timer.
Comment
I like your proposition.
In practice, to have a more predictable schedule, clock is not stopped at each violation or fault in many games. In those, the table officials are thus rather the scorer and the assistant scorer. Also, I would not start a new paragraph for such a small precision.
Besides, we should specify who is handling the protests (it is currently more or less the case).
Overall, this would give the following text.
15C.2 Game Officials
As with Rule Eight of the FIBA Rulebook, game officials shall consist of two or three referees and at least two table officials (at least the scorer and a timer/assistant scorer). Referees shall have all of the responsibilities and powers described in Articles 45, 46, and 47 except for articles covering the referees uniforms. At Unicon, for all playoff games in the A tournament, experienced referees who are not playing in the A tournament and not associated with any teams in the A tournament should be used. For all other games if the referees are players in the same tournament, the referees should be from at least two different teams. The referees are responsible for resolving protests concerning the game.
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I'm fine with your suggestions, I didn't include the last sentence because it is part of Fiba rules but it makes sense to add it here. Even if the timer only has to start the inital clock for a game without any stopped clock it still makes sense to call them the timer.
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There's a rule that says referees who are participating in the same event should be from different teams, but it does not say that they should be from different countries as well, which I think is important. We still have referee bias if we have them from 2 teams but both teams are french, or Belgium. Can we add that rule?
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Hi David, thank you for your thoughts about this. It is difficult to solve.
it is also important after many years of issues with A Basketball referees that the committee requests budget money to pay for certified high school foot referees in all playoff games, AND in any games just before the playoffs between 2 teams who will both be in the playoffs, or involving whether a team will make the playoffs or not.
The competitor cost is high enough now and the issues you are right about. I have seem these same issues happening for 15 years (since at least 2009 in New Zealand). Is it possible to finally request more $ to solve the referee bias issue? Some teams are not happy to participate unless they hear that there is budget $ to pay for refs for all IMPORTANT games, instead of just the semi-finals and championship game.
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Both Joshua use the expression "playoff games", but I am not sure what they are. What do you mean?
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"Playoffs" are: final, semi-final, quarter-final games. "playoff" games happen after the regular season or end of the tournament and they determine who might become champion. All playoff games should have pro referees that we pay for. In the last 15 years unicon pays for referees only in the final/championship game. We need to pay for refs for ALL playoff games.
Then there are games BEFORE "playoff" games that may decide what seed or ranking each team will have in the playoffs (#1 plays #4, then #2 plays vs #3). Or decide whether a team advances to the playoffs.
for example, If woom plays Animafond BEFORE the playoffs and Animafond beats Woom, maybe that means Animafond gets jnto the playoffs - but if they lose, maybe they don't get to be in playoffs. That's an important game and should not be refereed by other players in the tournament. These games should have pro referees that we pay for.
if there are 4 teams in the playoffs, you need to pay for 3 playoff fames worth of referees: 3 x 2 referees ($90/100 per game) = $300. Budgeting $500 for referees should be our request. That would cover playoffs and 2-3 important games before playoffs.
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I like the idea of pushing for referees, personally, I think it would make sense to enforce it as :
for the A tournament, during the "qualification phase" 1 "official" paid referee per match + 2 players from various team (and countries) then in the "play-off" part of the tournament, 2 referee per match.
That way, the referee can "familiarize" themself with how the game his played during the first part of the tournament and then be ready for the more "complicated" play-off games.
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Although I'd love for "official" pro refs to be used for every A tournament game at Unicon, I think we have to be realistic with hosts (budget constraints, organisational constraints ; we do not want to put too much pressure on hosts). We may advise it for the first prelims, and have it mandatory only for playoffs games. Just my 2 cents.
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It seems to me (but I may be wrong) that many other events require much more money than basketball, typically track races but also road and muni events because of the timing equipment and the result screens. Am I right?
Also, what is the situation in Hockey? Is there the same problem of having referees which are players?
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David, agreed. Other events required larger budgets. Josh Motenko's proposal -
'you need to pay for 3 playoff fames worth of referees: 3 x 2 referees ($90/100 per game) = $300. Budgeting $500 for referees should be our request'
-is not exorbitant or excessive but instead reasonable and needed.
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> Also, what is the situation in Hockey? Is there the same problem of having referees which are players?
In hockey, it is absolutely normal and completely unproblematic for games to be judged by other players. I don't know that there have ever been any considerations to handle this differently. The same principle has always been applied in the major national leagues and works without any problems there.
> It seems to me (but I may be wrong) that many other events require much more money than basketball
That may be true (although the gym rental is sometimes a cost factor that should not be neglected and is not required for Muni, for example), but the Unicon organizers usually still have the problem that they have a tight budget and have to try to save up every euro wherever possible.