USASF Meetings 2011: Rules Officials

There have been several ideas mentioned concerning USASF Rules Officials, also know as Safety or Tech Judges.

1. Rules Officials will work for the USASF, not the Event Producers, and be given full autonomy in enforcing the rules. This should help keep Event Producers out of the awkward position of deciding between enforcing a rule or not enforcing a rule to keep a customer happy. I’m not sure exactly how this will be done, but Les Stella said more information will be sent to the 2011-2012 class of Rules Officials once the test results have been sent.
2. Rules Officials will be restricted to only working for USASF Event Producers. This will serve as an additional benefit to USASF Members. This will not put restrictions on USASF Rules Officials working High School or College events, just All*Star events produced by non-USASF Event Producers.
3. Down the road, a long ways down the road, in a perfect world, the USASF would assign the Rules Officials for each event. In the meantime I’ve suggested having Les assign the Rules Officials for bid divisions at Worlds Qualifiers or creating a pool of Rules Officials from which the Event Producers could pull for Worlds Qualifiers. The goals are to ensure the teams attending Worlds have been seen by an experienced Rules Official and to test having the USASF assign Rules Officials in a way that the Event Producers would have to go along with. Worlds is the one event the USASF truly controls so they could require additional measures for an Event Producer to continue to be able to offer bids.

I don’t know which, if any, of these will be implement or when, but expect anything that will be implemented for the 2011-2012 season to be announced soon.