at the end of season. I have been season ticket holder since 96 and have seen any coach EVER tossed without a warning and certainly never seen one tossed when he is still in dugout. I heard this plate umpire used to work in the minors after today I can see why he is no longer working in minors. If he has that short a fuse he has no business working the college game either. Umpires for the most part know coaches are going to jaw at them during the game that is part of the game. I hope he doesn’t work anymore Arkansas games soon.
Mainieri was yapping at the umps (big-time) on Friday and nothing happened to him.
The coaches rate them after every weekend. It is used to decide who goes to postseason. I assume Seth (our ump yesterday) won’t work postseason.
Clay, does the Commissioners office have an official complaint process for umpire and referee concerns? Is this something that Jeff Long just needs to make a call and complain about or is it pretty much hands off?
Can you blackball an ump from working your games?
That’s a good question. I think you can complain to the point that someone doesn’t get assigned to work your games for a while. For instance, I don’t remember Perry Costello working an Arkansas game since that disastrous performance he had during the game between the Razorbacks and South Carolina at the College World Series.
And it was a long time before John Hampton worked an Arkansas game after Mike Anderson called him out at Florida.
There is a coordinator of officiating for every sport. The interesting thing about yesterday is that if it’s only Arkansas complaining, I’m not sure anything will get accomplished. There was another SEC team playing the series, too, and if LSU liked how things were called, then it’s a he said/she said thing.
The more influential aspect to this is that rate card the coaches send in. That is used to give the umpires their overall rating, and the ratings are used to assign them to the postseason, and ultimately determines how long they umpire at any given level.
They cannot black ball a ref or ump, but I think the director of referee figures it out that it’s not a good idea to send a ref/ump somewhere where he’s had poor performances. Eventually, they won’t be working in the league. The key is what the director of referee thinks of a performance. If a coach thinks he’s bad, but the evaluation shows that he didn’t miss many calls in that game, I think the referee should and would still work that team’s games. So just because you complain doesn’t mean it’s a valid complaint. The director of referee in each sport will know the difference. A bad performance is going to cause problems for the referee down the line. He won’t be in the league.