In my 10 years watching youth soccer I have found there is one thing every person associated with the game agrees on and that is there is a shortage of quality officials.
The two most common reasons you hear from those in charge are the "yelling parents scare off the newbies" and "if you don't like it why don't you become an official".
Well I would if the economics made sense. When you hear that the OSAA HS Centers are getting $60 a game you might think that's a lot but lets look at what are they taking to the bank.
First lets figure out how much time is actually involved officiating a game. Lets start by allotting 20 minutes of drive time each way for a total of 40 minutes. Next the Center is supposed to arrive 30 minutes before the game to inspect the field, the players and stand through the pregame introductions and administer the coin toss. Now add in 40 minutes for each half plus 10 minutes for half time and 5 minutes for stoppage for goals, injuries and cards and you get a total of 165 minutes or 2.75 hours of their time door to door. Yes door to door because the decision is to stay home vs. leave for officiating.
$60 divided by 2.75 hours works out to a gross of $21.81 an hour. That still doesn't sound too bad until we take out taxes. I'll skip the cost of uniforms (3 colors) and flags/cards/whistles/cleats and assume the mileage allowance covers the gas and maintenance. But we all know that Uncle Sam has to get his cut. Lets assume a 28% tax bracket and a 15.4% self employment tax for a total of 43.4% and that $21.81 drops down to $12.34 hr. for a net take home per HS game of $33.93. Now the tax rate assumption you can quibble with but don't get too caught up in the specifics and stay focused on the CONCEPT here.
Would you be willing to give up a night after going to your day job for $34? If you say yes you either love the game or are NOT in the 28% tax bracket.
Now here is the crux of the matter. The Club games are where the new official are recruited to and trained on and perfect their craft doing so we have to look at what the incentives are for a U16+ Club official. A few Club Centers get $55 per game but the majority get $42-52 per game depending upon their attained certification level BUT they have a 10 minute longer game (90 vs 80) but no stoppage.
So that math for a Club Center works out to 165 game minutes or 2.75 hours and using the lower $42 rate because that is what a majority of the Centers are paid you get a gross rate of $15.27 per hour. Take out the 43.4% in taxes and you get an after tax rate of $8.64 per hour or $23.77 game! Now factor in these games are on your days off and not neatly scheduled at the end or the beginning of your Saturday and or Sunday and then ask yourself would you be doing that for the money?
The per game pay is even WORSE for tournaments and only partially off set by fact that they get two or three games without having to drive but they end up with rest time between games which cuts down the per hour rate even further.
Now most importantly realize that someone wanting to become an official does not get to be a Center out of the gate and has to spend one or more years as an AR getting even LESS per hour and you begin to understand why there is a shortage of bodies let alone people who take the job as seriously as our players!
So to the knee jerkers who say "stop bitch'n and get yer license" I say pay me a fair rate and I'll gladly step onto the pitch.
Lastly, I want everyone reading this to realize the fix is not a big number for any individual player and easy to administrate. We are talking about HS age players paying only $40 more PER PLAYER for BOTH Fall and Spring leagues to raise the pay of ALL THREE officials.
The math is 36 players per game or $1,440 for league play spread out over a 14 game Fall season and a 12 game Spring season. That $40 per player increase would put $55 more PER GAME on the field for officiating! This would allow the leagues to get the average U16+ Center pay up to $67 per game and the AR's up from the pathetic $20 per game to a more respectable $30 per game.
That last number ($30) is the most important because we can't attract and RETAIN adult officials if we are asking them to give up their Weekends for $20 a game! The current fee schedule is guaranteed to primarily attract Students looking for extra cash and not people taking the job as serious as is should be.
For Tournaments the number is much, much smaller because at the HS ages the games are shorter and they do get multiple games per trip so for a 4 game tournament you are trying to get the Center pay up to $50 from $35 and the AR's up to $25 from $15. Putting $25 more dollars per game and $100 for a 4 game tournament on the fields divided by 36 players is only $2.78. per player! Yes only $2.78 per player for the WHOLE tournament. So for a team going to 4 tournaments you are talking about a whopping $11 for the Summer.
So for about $51 per player for the ENTIRE year Oregon can have meaningful Referee compensation to attract and equally important retain enough officials. Once you have enough bodies who WANT the job you can address the training and quality issues. Until then you beg for bodies and take what you can get and the results we have seen over the years.
I have never met a parent in 10 years on the sidelines who said that they wouldn't be willing to pay more for better officiating. When you are talking about $1,300-1,500 club fees another $51 to improve the experience only makes sense.
Of course all of these numbers get adjusted down for the younger ages because their games are shorter so you would be looking at paying approximately an additional $35 for the U14-15 ages and $30 for the U11-13 age groups which makes NOT doing this even more silly.
The two most common reasons you hear from those in charge are the "yelling parents scare off the newbies" and "if you don't like it why don't you become an official".
Well I would if the economics made sense. When you hear that the OSAA HS Centers are getting $60 a game you might think that's a lot but lets look at what are they taking to the bank.
First lets figure out how much time is actually involved officiating a game. Lets start by allotting 20 minutes of drive time each way for a total of 40 minutes. Next the Center is supposed to arrive 30 minutes before the game to inspect the field, the players and stand through the pregame introductions and administer the coin toss. Now add in 40 minutes for each half plus 10 minutes for half time and 5 minutes for stoppage for goals, injuries and cards and you get a total of 165 minutes or 2.75 hours of their time door to door. Yes door to door because the decision is to stay home vs. leave for officiating.
$60 divided by 2.75 hours works out to a gross of $21.81 an hour. That still doesn't sound too bad until we take out taxes. I'll skip the cost of uniforms (3 colors) and flags/cards/whistles/cleats and assume the mileage allowance covers the gas and maintenance. But we all know that Uncle Sam has to get his cut. Lets assume a 28% tax bracket and a 15.4% self employment tax for a total of 43.4% and that $21.81 drops down to $12.34 hr. for a net take home per HS game of $33.93. Now the tax rate assumption you can quibble with but don't get too caught up in the specifics and stay focused on the CONCEPT here.
Would you be willing to give up a night after going to your day job for $34? If you say yes you either love the game or are NOT in the 28% tax bracket.
Now here is the crux of the matter. The Club games are where the new official are recruited to and trained on and perfect their craft doing so we have to look at what the incentives are for a U16+ Club official. A few Club Centers get $55 per game but the majority get $42-52 per game depending upon their attained certification level BUT they have a 10 minute longer game (90 vs 80) but no stoppage.
So that math for a Club Center works out to 165 game minutes or 2.75 hours and using the lower $42 rate because that is what a majority of the Centers are paid you get a gross rate of $15.27 per hour. Take out the 43.4% in taxes and you get an after tax rate of $8.64 per hour or $23.77 game! Now factor in these games are on your days off and not neatly scheduled at the end or the beginning of your Saturday and or Sunday and then ask yourself would you be doing that for the money?
The per game pay is even WORSE for tournaments and only partially off set by fact that they get two or three games without having to drive but they end up with rest time between games which cuts down the per hour rate even further.
Now most importantly realize that someone wanting to become an official does not get to be a Center out of the gate and has to spend one or more years as an AR getting even LESS per hour and you begin to understand why there is a shortage of bodies let alone people who take the job as seriously as our players!
So to the knee jerkers who say "stop bitch'n and get yer license" I say pay me a fair rate and I'll gladly step onto the pitch.
Lastly, I want everyone reading this to realize the fix is not a big number for any individual player and easy to administrate. We are talking about HS age players paying only $40 more PER PLAYER for BOTH Fall and Spring leagues to raise the pay of ALL THREE officials.
The math is 36 players per game or $1,440 for league play spread out over a 14 game Fall season and a 12 game Spring season. That $40 per player increase would put $55 more PER GAME on the field for officiating! This would allow the leagues to get the average U16+ Center pay up to $67 per game and the AR's up from the pathetic $20 per game to a more respectable $30 per game.
That last number ($30) is the most important because we can't attract and RETAIN adult officials if we are asking them to give up their Weekends for $20 a game! The current fee schedule is guaranteed to primarily attract Students looking for extra cash and not people taking the job as serious as is should be.
For Tournaments the number is much, much smaller because at the HS ages the games are shorter and they do get multiple games per trip so for a 4 game tournament you are trying to get the Center pay up to $50 from $35 and the AR's up to $25 from $15. Putting $25 more dollars per game and $100 for a 4 game tournament on the fields divided by 36 players is only $2.78. per player! Yes only $2.78 per player for the WHOLE tournament. So for a team going to 4 tournaments you are talking about a whopping $11 for the Summer.
So for about $51 per player for the ENTIRE year Oregon can have meaningful Referee compensation to attract and equally important retain enough officials. Once you have enough bodies who WANT the job you can address the training and quality issues. Until then you beg for bodies and take what you can get and the results we have seen over the years.
I have never met a parent in 10 years on the sidelines who said that they wouldn't be willing to pay more for better officiating. When you are talking about $1,300-1,500 club fees another $51 to improve the experience only makes sense.
Of course all of these numbers get adjusted down for the younger ages because their games are shorter so you would be looking at paying approximately an additional $35 for the U14-15 ages and $30 for the U11-13 age groups which makes NOT doing this even more silly.
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