Officious pricks that run high school athletics for $500, Alex

That's my former co-worker. That's my ex-copy editor. 8)

 

Key words in that last sentence are "AAU coaches"

 

Who thinks they're doing the right thing by sitting down and writing regulations on the width of stripes on basketball uniforms?

 

In Mississippi, the public school association requires that head coaches be either a teacher or an administrator of some sort, i.e. football coaches doubling as ADs or basketball coaches doubling as assistant principals or some such. Assistants however, can be a different story. There are several schools in our area that have non-school personnel on the sidelines as assistants. In the private school association, they prefer teachers to serve as head coaches, but it's not a requirement.

 

Because, if they do not, NIKE (or somebody else) will come out with zigzag horizontal stripes in contrasting psychedelic flourescent colors to the point it is impossible to tell which team is home and which team is away.

Unlike a fair number of rules, these rules are NOT simply the result of some old honky codgers sitting down in a smoke-filled room and grousing, "goddamn these young whipper-snappers and all their hip-hop slamma jamma nonsense" -- there are actual functional reasons to require that home and away uniforms must be clearly visually distinctive, and limiting extraneous markings.

 

I'm not buying that. Lawndale's unis were visually distinctive.

Not saying its why they lost the game. I disagree with the call, above all else, because it's a uniform. Uniforms in no way provide a competitive or unfair advantage.

The IHSA could've just as easily told Lawndale to ditch the duds after state. If it wasn't enough of an infraction to call a tech at any point before, why at state?

Why? Because the IHSA will fuck things up at any and every opportunity. Their class expansion was done in hasty and ham-handed fashion, simply because they wanted to do it. This decision fits right in with their recent track record.

 

Well,

a) they've been told several times before that the uniforms are in violation, and neglected/refused to do anything about it.

If they had already been told on several occasions that rules were being violated, nothing was done, then after the state finals, they were told yet again, "we are really serious this time, we're not kidding around like all the other times, get rid of those uniforms," why would they think anything would be done about it next year, either??

b) the refs earlier in the season were clearly negligent in not calling the technicals earlier -- in fact, the first time they took the floor in the illegal uniforms.

 

Why the heck do you think rules like that continue to exist? AAU coaches are down there with cheerleading parents as some of the lowest life forms on earth.

Anyway, while the NFHS rules appear to be rather restrictive and draconian, there is a lot of freedom within them ... stripes and other-colored markings can simply not interfere with the front torso or the back of the jersey.

And why was a technical not called in Game 1? Because most officials are classy enough to come over to a coach, tell the team "you're not in compliance, your uniforms are illegal. I'll give you a free pass tonight because you can't change them, but you might want to start thinking about ordering new ones ASAP."

Most officials tend to look the other way on uniform violations. But when you get to state, some ham-handed Sgt. Schultz from the state association decides now is the time to make a statement and tells the officials "if you don't call a tech, you're never working the state finals again."

Another example ...

The headband rule in girls basketball was a new one this year. All bands have to be the same color (and either black, beige, the color of the uniform or a school color). The team I coach had one girl who wore a headband (so we ordered her one in each of the school's colors), and the rest just rolled up red pre-wrap and put it in their hair.

Before one game, an official said he'd tech all of our kids because the red pre-wrap wasn't an "approved color" (never mind that it was one of our school colors), and also required the girl wearing the white headband to take it off because it didn't match the others. Once the girls all took off their hairbands, our other player put her headband back on at halftime because she was now in compliance.

(and just as a sidenote, the officials who were worried about how our players' hair looked lost control of the game somewhere around the time the jump ball was controlled that night).

 

doesn't matter, dd. you can't really disagree with the call. they were in violation. it's a rule. is it a dumb rule? maybe. maybe not. but it's a rule. coaches are to know the rules and officials are there enforce them. the end.

 

If every rule was called precisely as written, no one would ever finish a basketball game in under six hours.

 

sure. but what is there to interpret about this one? seems pretty clear to me.

 

You can interpret whether to call it or not. Just like you can interpret how much contact there really needs to be before you call the foul.