Refereeing basketball games... One of my new Jobs

A few weeks ago I started refereeing basketball games. The age groups i ref are fifth graders to eighth graders. I played sports my whole life and still do occasionally, and I have umpired baseball games too, but this has been my first time refereeing basketball games, so I would like to write about a few things I find very interesting from my experience as a referee so far.

People are very, very stupid. Yes that is right.. I don't have a lot of faith in the emotional and mental maturity level of the average human being as it is and this is just confirming/strengthening my judgments of the average human... It is unbelievable how worked up the coaches and parents get over their 10 year old sons basketball game.. One of my favorite/not favorite things the coaches and parents yell is, "Traveling!!" as if I didn't see it. The reason it's so ridiculous is because these kids travel almost every time they get the ball, so as referee's we have to try to just call the very obvious ones.  Another common quote i'd like to talk about is, "Call it both ways ref!!". Last night a coach kept yelling that at me and I said to him during a time out, "Look, I don't know anyone on either team, nor do I care about anyone on either team, so do you really think I have a reason to throw the game? Do you really think I would randomly decide I want to just start calling fouls on one team and not the other?" 

Last night some kids grandpa came up to my cousin Garrett and I (who ref's with me sometimes) and said, "In basketball there is a rule called three seconds in the key, and you guys didn't call it once last game.? We wanted to tell the guy all the other rules their are in basketball that we didn't call last game... Why? Cause they didn't happen!

I am blown away by how many coaches there are that yell throughout the game what the call should be, even when we do call them they are one second ahead of us. Then the other coach yells, "Oh don't let him influence you to call that!" HAHA. it's just great.. One coach was yelling at us all game (and his voice was unusually loud) and his team ended up winning by a three pointer at the buzzer. He was so happy and he came up and told us a good job and said sorry I got a little worked up and was yelling at you guys so much.... I wanted to say, "Liar, you wouldn't have been sorry or thought we did a good job if that last shot didn't go in and you ended up losing." Because that's the truth. Why didn't the other coach come up and shake our hand and tell us sorry and that we did a good job? hhmmmm, probably cause his team lost. Which proves how emotionally worked up these people get..

It's really funny how the coaches will yell things like, "Hey he's reaching!!" or, "that's three seconds in the key!!" but then when his players do it he's quiet. I always want to call the foul he's complaining about on his team and then when he freaks out i'd say, "well coach what do you want me to do? you've been yelling at me to watch for three seconds in the key and so I did and your guy was in the key for three seconds." 

One of these days I want to coach basketball just so I can yell things like, "Hey, are you blind ref!!? My guy's been in the key for three seconds!" or, "Blow your whistle! my players are reaching in like crazy!!" The fact that coaches stay silent when their players are in the wrong, but yell and throw fits when the other team is in the wrong, only proves they don't actually care for the game to be called fair. 

P.S. I get paid $15 a game to do this in case you were wondering why I deal with all of this drama. And being the struggling college student that I am it's not a bad job on the side.