To the serious part of all of this amazingly entertaining dialogue; several questions:
  • ...The SCHSL is an obtuse organiztion that only changes when they cannot forestall legal action. That raises an interesting point -- that the SCHSL might one day change their stance on officials by someone litigating against them for an unsafe environment. Do you anticipate that occurring?
  • ...but the fact is that there are literally not enough officials to go around on a Tuesday or Friday night for everyone to have three... Are there literally not enough officials to "go around?" In other words, do we suffer from too few people with the necessary qualifications or do we suffer from too few people willing to do the work?
  • So...they refuse to participate because they feel overqualified for the job? Seems a bit counterproductive...I would think the more certified officials we have in the ranks, the higher the overall level level of officiating would be--accepting, of course, that a certification necessarily indicates a higher level of performance (not always true). Perhaps it would help if more officials with higher certification would come and bring examples of officiating to the masses, rather than walking away... Let us suppose that there is a busy brain surgeon who is absolutely wonderful at digging ditches. While those who wish the ditch to be dug might bemoan the fact that the brain surgeon doesn't choose to live her life at the bottom of a ditch, others might come to the conclusion that the brain surgeon is making a rational choice. What would lead those properly credentialed officials to conclude that officiating in high school is a rational choice?


Now to the fun part of it...in reading this I was taken back to my favorite curmudgeon and misanthrope...

...I suppose that the inferiority of the teachers of [English] is largely due to the fact that they are recruited from the lower moiety of pedagogical aspirants. The more ambitious fellows tackle something that seems more recondite, and hence better worth knowing. A prospective teacher of biology, say, or mathematics, or physics, cannot outfit himself for his career by reading a few plays of Shakespeare, memorizing the rules of grammar laid down by idiots, and learning to pronounce either as if it were spelled eyether; he must apply himself to a vast mass of strange and difficult facts, and mastering them requires a kind of capacity that is not common. The stupider fellow turns to something that is easier and more obvious, which is to say, to the language that every "educated" man is presumed to know, and the books he is presumed to have read...

H.L. Menken