The Things I Am Thankful For

At this time of year I think pretty much everyone is saying the things that they are thankful for in their lives and I have decided to do the same. For me it is basically the 4 F's that I am thankful for. Family, Friends, my Faith, and Football.
Happy Thanksgiving everyone.

The Beauty of the T

So I previously said that I wanted to focus on my life as a referee when I re-started my blogging and this will be my first post on the subject. It is now nearly 12:30 am and I have just gotten home from a rodeo trip (this is what we call our out of town trips to little po dunk towns to ref). We left at 3:45 and made the trip out to Floresville where my partner and I officiated 4 middle school basketball games. Yes I said that right, we did 4 games. And if you have never seen, let alone refereed a middle school basketball game then you have no idea how bad it is. Don't get me wrong I love it and there are some decent ball players but overall it is terrible. The first of our 4 games tipped off at 5pm and we finally finished up at about 9:30pm. So if you can imagine the soreness of my legs from running up and down a basketball court for 4 1/2 hours. Sometimes I wonder how marathon runners do it and then I have nights like tonight where I think it would be a piece of cake.
I'm sure you are wondering how I just made it home if my games ended nearly 3 hours ago. Well when you factor in time to shower and change, driving, and stopping to get something to eat. You see how it is possible. Yet I will be up in the morning ready to go again as I have 2 games starting at 11am which means I will have to leave the house by 9:45am. And I'm sure you are now wondering why I am writing and not in bed already. Well it is actually pretty simple, gotta wash my uniform. I have 2 full uniforms and referee 12 games in 5 days this week which means I get to stay up and wash, dry, and hang them up so I will be ready to go in the morning.
If all of this has made you wonder why I put myself through this, the answer is simply 2 things: I love it and for the money. I love running up and down the court trying to be the best official I can be and the money is better than any part time job I could have while I got to school. Generally we average about $35 a game with games usually lasting 1 to 1 1/2 hours per game.
This brings me to the point of my post today. Every year of my officiating career thus far I have always joked with my family and friends that I give out a lot of Technical Fouls (T's) and over the last few years I have averaged 1 T per 3-4 games officiated. I generally work about 120 games a season so that means that I give out approximately 30-40 T's per season. And if anyone is wondering no I never think twice about doing and and I do enjoy giving them. Back to my point, thus far this season I have given 6 T's in 10 games. 3 of which I gave out tonight. If I continue that trend (I doubt that it will happen) based on 120 games this season I will give out 72 T's. I find this particularly humorous because one of the things that I wanted to work on this season was to be more open to talking with coaches in order to cut down on T's and yet I have actually increased and nearly doubled my previous amount. Not that I mind, like I said I do get some enjoyment out of putting coaches or players in their place when they decide to act out but I really don't see this trend continuing. To me it is just a tool that can be used to keep control and order and I freely use the tools given me so like the title of the post says The Beauty of the T.

Texas is the best state for football

So today during lunch I was reading the newspaper (really just the sports section, I never even look at any of the other sections) and I was intrigued by the top 25 BCS rankings and which states had the most teams.

Here is what I found: Texas had the most teams with 3 (Texas Tech at #2, UT at #3, and TCU at #16) then five states each had 2 teams Florida (Florida at #4 and Miami at #23), Ohio (Ohio State at #10 and Cincinnati at #19), Oklahoma (Oklahoma at #5 and Oklahoma State at #11), Oregon (Oregon State at #21 and Oregon at #24), Pennsylvania (Penn State at #8 and Pitt at #20), and Utah (Utah at #7 and BYU at #14)

I found these results pretty interesting. With 3 things that stand out to me.

First: 4 of the top 5 "football" states (Texas, Florida, Ohio, and Pennsylvania) are represented with at least 2 teams. While the 5th football state, California, only has one team, USC at #6, in the top 25 of the BCS rankings. This makes me wonder, What has happened to all the California schools? UCLA, Cal, and Stanford are nowhere to be found.

Second:
How did Oregon and Utah make the list of states with multiple teams? Seriously when did these states become football hot beds? In the case of the Oregon schools we see that the Pac-10 isn't as weak as we once thought. And although these teams are not anywhere close to the National Championship Hunt each has played respectable football all season (Just don't mention the atrocious uniforms Oregon decided to sport recently, someone please tell Nike that not all Uniforms fly, pun intended) with Oregon State in the drivers seat for the Pac-10 championship and a trip to the Rose Bowl.
Utah and BYU have both played well throughout the season and sport a combined record of 21-1 with the only loss by BYU coming against TCU which sports the top ranked defense in the nation and a future matchup between the 2 to decide the Mountain West conference championship and possible an at-large bid to a BCS Bowl. Which leads me to my last point.

Third:
Is the Mountain West conference the 3rd best conference in the nation behind the Big 12 and the SEC? Sure the bottom half of the conference lacks the strength of the upper half but with 3 teams in the top 25 of the BCS (BYU, TCU, and Utah), the top ranked defense in the nation (TCU), and a combined record of 38-6 for the top 4 MWC teams I think they have a compelling argument that at least for one year the MWC is the 3rd best conference in the nation.

So it begins...again

After nearly an 8 month layoff I have decided to come out of Blogger retirement (Thanks Brett Farve for showing me that I can still be effective after retiring prematurely). Today while one of my 3 visits to Taco Cabana (Yes I know that it is a little ridiculous to go to TC 3 times in one day) I decided that I wanted to start writing again. This time I want to make it more than just random thoughts or what is going on in my life. I want to use this blog as an insight into my life as a sports official and how it affects pretty much every aspect of my life. Don't get me wrong I will definitely be adding the occasional random thought or the anecdote from the recent happenings of my life but I primarily want to focus on the refereeing (is that even a word) side of things.