I am a bad soccer player but a pretty good referee.
Last night, I was working a high school game with a former MLS official and an up and coming USSF-5 who has a plausible path to the MLS, on my lines. I set the tone early with a caution for a dive in the box at the sixty third second. The players just played for the rest of the match. After the game, the ref crew stopped for a burger and a beer.
We talked through the first caution (ballsy but right) and a second caution for a crap tackle as well as a few other situations. And then we talked about a major tournament two time zones away. Both of the other guys had been invited to officiate. The former MLS guy had been invited as a “senior mentor” while the young guy had been invited as part of the US Soccer Federation (USSF) identification/winnowing process. I’ll never be a part of this process, I am slightly too old and more than slightly too slow, but it fascinates me.
Right now there are roughly 200 referees who are theoretically MLS eligible (Grade 4 or higher), of which roughly a third will get an MLS game this year, and third will never see an MLS preseason camp much less a game because they either blew their opportunities at one level below MLS or have other circumstances going on. The rest are either working towards the MLS or retired from the MLS. There are another 500 or so officials (Grade-6 States, Grade-5 States, Grade-5 National Candidates etc) who have been identified as potential top flight referees with appropriate seasoning/mentoring/opportunities.
The screening process is extremely steep with very high attrition rates. The intake phase, which is where my younger buddy is, basically has the USSF telling candidates to jump. He has been sent to Dallas, Phoenix, Orlando, Chicago, Minneapolis, Portland and Denver this year. Some of those tournaments pay, others cover expenses and nothing more. He has been called to cover a semi-pro game six hours away eight hours before kick-off. If getting to the MLS is a goal as a referee, refereeing is a full time job. Refereeing full time at the sub-MLS level is a better than poverty level gig but it is below first job out of college gig. He can do this because refereeing is his primary source of income, but he has a small sideline gig as a web designer and is on his mom’s insurance for another year.
Frequent and active refereeing hurts. In the past three years I’ve had a hip flexor injury, turf toe, bursistis and a couple of bone bruises from reffing. Quite a few refs remove themselves from consideration because they can not afford to take the risks. If health insurance is available to the cohort of potential future MLS at a price of one or two decent game fees a month, the MLS pipeline won’t be artifically restricted to guys who are both good and can afford to take the risk of running naked without health insurance.
We won’t see on field results for another five years as the refs who are halfway through the pipeline have already passed (on average) the point of deciding whether or not reffing without insurance is a tolerable risk. But the refs in the next few years who are just starting the pipeline won’t be forced through the chokepoint of health insurance risk. They’ll be included or excluded based on skill on the field.
Baud
I also hope that, with Obamacare, players will no longer have to flop just to get medical treatment.
Patricia Kayden
Another positive result of Obamacare.
AdamK
This blog sucks. I wanna see pics of Cole’s pets.
jayackroyd
Got a cousin in law who is an MLS referee. Mike Rottersman. He really enjoys it.
Me, I love refs, umpires and the like. Used to be a serious umpire fan before MLB squeezed the juice out of the position. I still think MLB would have been better off publishing umpire ERAs than using strike zone nannyism.
OzarkHillbilly
You must be some kind of Commie.
slim shady
Great post. Can we move on to what Steve and John had for breakfast now?
RSA
Nice. I imagine we’ll see all sorts of different areas where the ACA lets people take on new opportunities or existing ones with more confidence. John Scalzi (on the BJ blog roll) has been talking about the better-known situation of writers, who often work free-lance… “Not to mention musicians, artists, actors, and any other sort of creative people.”
Richard Mayhew
@Baud: Players will always flop, always!
Violet
No matter the sport, I always think the referees are the hardest working people on the field. They just never stop the whole game.
OzarkHillbilly
@Violet: No matter the sport, I always think the referees are the dumbest working people on the field.
FTFY ;-)
Punchy
Wow. I did NOT expect this to work its way around to a healthcare rant. Wordsmithing subterfuge.
OT, but these fuckers are happy…. happy …. that people are out of job. That’s pyschopathic.
whiskey
I’m a rugby referee, and I have to say, that refereeing is far more tiring than playing (at least playing as a back, those lazy shits)
Violet
@OzarkHillbilly: Ha! As as fair weather sports fan, I mostly just watch the games without getting too emotionally involved. Refs, at least in games where they run around with the players, have to be in really good shape to keep up.
dr. bloor
So what you’re saying is that another nefarious aspect of Obummercare is that it’s going to grow that Godless commie version of foo’ball here in the US of A.
Figures.
WereBear
Consistent, though. They were making a big fuss over “They who don’t work, don’t eat,” so they are throwing people out of work… and making sure they also can’t get food stamps.
And this thrills them!
I hope more people get a look at just how screwed up they are.
Omnes Omnibus
@whiskey:
But we tend to have great hair.
ETA: I was a wing.
rea
take the risk of running naked without health insurance.
My god, I’m going to have to start watching soccer. I had no idea.
Tom65
Retired Grade 6 here. Had to give it up at 43 when my orthopedist told me my next surgery would be knee replacement (which I’m probably looking at now anyway). Tried assessing and instructing for a while, but didn’t like the administrative (and political) end of the biz.
WereBear
@rea: If that’s what you’ve been missing, go for Rugby, instead.
So many players love to “go commando” that during our local tournaments, we have many front page newspaper pics of the action.
There is a two layer “weenie watch” in the photo department at such times, to cut down on the cheap thrills therein.
Richard Mayhew
@Tom65: That is probably where I’ll end in the next decade or so. I’m still young and dumb enough that I’m in my refereeing prime — a couple thousand games on my log so I’ve seen a lot and running five or six miles in the center of a mens amateur match is still not painful most days. But this is a short window of health and experience before I have to start relying on experience to make up for positioning that I can no longer quite get to.
Richard Mayhew
@OzarkHillbilly: Yeah, we tend to be nuts. My observation is the better referees tend to either be goalkeepers (goalies in any sport are touched in the head) because they see the entire field more often OR the team goon as they know all things that they like to get away with.
AdamK
The House should pass a stand-alone Underpants for Rugby Players funding bill. That’d show ’em!
Amir Khalid
As I recall, top-flight referees must retire at 45, per FIFA regulations, which makes for a short career — not that much longer than players. If so, can a pro ref make enough to compensate for this?
West of the Cascades
This is a great post — I hadn’t thought of the connection between the execrable officiating we get at many MLS matches and the absence of health insurance. Last weekend’s Timbers-Galaxy game was one of the first where I sat back afterwards and thought, “that was a well-called game” (of course, the ref and linesman having the balls to waive off LA’s tying goal for offsides – clearly the right call – probably had something to do with that — but overall the ref was in charge of the match in a way one rarely sees in MLS and which conforms to what Richard describes in the match he officiated).
WereBear
It’s a really sick awful thing the Republicans like to push:
If you really loved teaching/painting/nursing/whatever you’d do it for serf wages!
When what society needs is people who both love it… and can afford to do it.
Richard Mayhew
@Amir Khalid: Depends — in the US maybe, in English Premier League yes.
US top flight refs have recently formed an external assigning organization (PRO) that is willing to hire full time referees for MLS. The full timers are making a decent living. These are the guys in the middle with a whistle. The ARs and 4th officials are seldom full-timers. They get a game by game fee (~500 to $750) plus expenses, so a combination of an active MLS schedule, plus top flight NCAA at $250 to $300 per game plus slumming it elsewhere, they can get a good stretch of 10 years at $30,000 or more a year. The very top officials (the US FIFA panel) will get more as well as money for international matches plus there is a decent chance that a few retiring FIFAs will get Federation jobs after they age out.
EPL and other top European officials have more leagues that pay better. Top EPL officials are in the $100,000 a year range.
Again, they can get a good 10 or 12 years and then power down.
Roger Moore
@WereBear:
If they really loved managing/investment banking/CEOing/whatever, they’d be willing to do it for serf wages. They’re a bunch of obvious hypocrites.
ThresherK
@WereBear: You forgot two helpers along to this point: Cheap words to honor, and having one’s vocation be described as a “calling”–the kiss of death when one wants more than poverty wages.
Teaching? A calling.
Nursing? A calling.
Being the next Charles Foster Kane or William C. Durant? Rich people are allowed their love of money.
(Funny how so many “callings” started out as “women’s work” in the 18th century.)
burnspbesq
@West of the Cascades:
The truth will prevail! FTFT!
Lee
Both my daughters are soccer referees. Both are currently grade 8. The oldest is thinking about trying out for 7.
They really enjoy the work & it is good money for middle/high school.
Any advice for fairly new referees?
thanks,
Richard Mayhew
@Lee: If you’re going to do it for anything more then beer/gas money, you have to enjoy it. As a good friend once said, he would not ref as many games if he did not get paid, and he would ref far fewer if he did not enjoy it.
At the level of a young ref, my biggest piece of advice for a single game is run your ass off. If you are working hard, you buy a whole lot of slack for gray area judgments compared to being 40 yards off the ball and making the same call. More importantly, tell your daughters to find refs that they respect and use them as mentors. 95% of my education as a referee has been informal and tacit knowledge transfers. Clinics help, but they are useful more as signalling and networking opportunities most of the time than for actual material presentation. I’ll get more out of a lunch or a beer at the bar afterwards than I do at most clinic sessions.
Something fabulous
@Lee: wait!! is richard mayhew randhino?!?!!?? all is revealed!!….