Q&A: Associate commissioner Tom Robinson on high school officiating
AURORA — As CHSAA’s liaison to every official in the state, Tom Robinson has his fair share of rough days at the office. The associate commissioner hears it all when it comes to any officiating issue, but he tries to block out the outside noise.
Robinson takes time during the year to attend as many games as he can evaluate referees and try to help them develop so they can reach higher levels.
He also serves as a replay official for the Big 12 and the Mountain West conferences — so if anyone knows the rules, it’s Robinson.
We sat down with Robinson to discuss issues that arise when it comes to officials, as well as the expanded use of iWanamaker to score Colorado high school golf, which he also oversees.
Q: As head of officials, what is the biggest concern for you going into the start of any school year?
Tom Robinson: I don’t know if I would say it’s concern. It’s just a lot of preparation that goes into the start of not only the school year and the fall season, but the winter and the spring (as well). All of our officials organizations, every single one of them are in the throes of master planning.
It’s like a master clinic to prepare their officials for the upcoming year relative to new rules, maybe new mechanics. Maybe it’s looking at issues they had during the previous season that they want to correct. So concern? Maybe not. It’s just having enough time and the right approach to get them prepared for the season.
Q: What’s the biggest complaint that you hear on a regular basis in regard to officials?
Robinson: It’s not even a love/hate, it’s a hate/hate relationship with officials. It’s just somebody complaining that either the officials blew a call or in some respects it’s that (a team) was cheated or something, or that the officials have some kind of bias. Which is just the mentality about officials, unfortunately.
Q: When you’re attending a game and you see an incorrect call made, what’s the process that you go through? Do you inform the officials after the fact that a certain call was wrong or do you address the ruling with all the officials as a group?
Robinson: Probably the temptation is, for example if it’s a football game and it happens in the first half, to storm into the locker room at halftime and say, “You guys flat screwed that up.” But that’s not my approach. The deed is done. There is no going back on it, so what I generally do is make a note.
And if it’s a football game, I just contact the referee to have him tell me what happened on the play, I give him my response as to what happened on the play and just follow up that way. I try to be heavy-handed with that piece of it.
Q: People watch a lot of NFL and they always think the rule at the highest level of a sport trickle down, but that’s not always the case. What would you say to someone who claims they know a rule but really don’t?
Robinson: That’s difficult. A lot of people would like for all the codes to be the same. Most of them know that there are three different codes for rules. I would say to a fan in that case — I would inform them that for high school there is a code and it may be different than what happens on Sunday. In fact, that’s kind of what we do. We say, “That’s a Sunday rule.”
Everybody knows that Sunday belongs to the NFL, because that’s what they watch primarily. There’s a tendency to want to say that how officials officiate on Sunday is how they should do it on Friday, and sometimes, it’s far from the truth. For example, if you have pass interference, in the NFL that is a devastating rule. You throw a 60-yard bomb and it’s at the spot of the foul. In high school, it’s 15 yards from the previous spot. In college, it’s 15 yards from the previous spot, but if it’s inside of that, it’s a spot foul.
Q: Earlier this week, a friend brought up to me that there’s this quirky field goal rule where you can free kick it off a tee. Why do rules like that exist? (Note: The rule was used when Kip Smith of Legacy kicked the state record 67-yard field goal
.)Robinson: You know something, that’s a good question. That’s for somebody who is a grandfather of a grandfather of a grandfather of me that would probably know when that rule came in. There are some people (around) that know that too. When you say, “Kick a field goal,” it’s from a tee or a place kicked, but it’s from scrimmage. So the opponent has a chance to block it and that’s generally what we know.
In high school and in the pros, there’s this quirky rule that says if on a scrimmage kick — a punt play — the receiver fair catches or is awarded a fair catch, on that spot where the play is ruled dead, the (receiving) team can set up for a free-kick field goal. So in high school and the pros, they can do that. They can get three points out of that.
So let’s say you’re punting from your own endzone and you get nervous and you want to get the kick off quick and you pop it up and it only gets to your 20-yard line and the receivers fair catch it, the other team can kick a field goal from that spot. Depending on the time and the score of the game, that would dictate whether they want to or not. Let’s say there’s one second left and they’re down two, then I certainly would free-kick it. I would tell the referee, “I hope you know this rule.” There’s no pressure except for kicking it off the tee.
Q: When you look at the rule books that are laying around this office, they all have NFHS on it. Is there a NFHS rule book and a CHSAA rule book or do Colorado high school athletics go by what the NFHS puts into place?
Robinson: We’re one of not many states that are 100 percent states. We 100 percent abide by NFHS rules. The National Federation of High School rules. Now, the 100 percent label is done by sport. So you can go 100 percent in football but maybe not 100 percent in basketball. For example, in Texas they are 100 percent in basketball, just like we are.
We go strictly by NFHS and those are our rules. CHSAA does not have its own rule book, except to say that it’s NFHS. But in Texas, they go by NCAA rules (in football). They also have seven-person crews and mechanics as well. As a result of that, they can’t have anybody on the national high school rules committee because they are not 100 percent.
Q: So when you say Colorado is “100 percent” are they 100 percent in every sport?
Robinson: We are rare because we are 100 percent in every sport. We don’t deviate. Another example would be a shot clock in basketball. There are some states that have a shot clock. New York, California, North and South Dakota. Shot clock. Those states, they’re not 100 percent in basketball. We are, so we don’t have a shot clock.
Q: You’re also the commissioner in charge of golf. There are a lot of people who express concerns with iWanamaker. What’s the biggest benefit of iWanamaker with where we are today in high school athletics?
Robinson: I think this, and I’ve expressed it all along, it’s just I can’t get in front of every single coach in an auditorium — at least after they tell me all the problems with iWanamaker. If I can actually get through that and tell them what the vision is, most of them are pretty responsive.
The vision is just like everything else we do: We have MaxPreps which is the repository for scores for volleyball, for football, for basketball. That’s where you would go to find schedules and scores of events in just about every sport. You can’t go to MaxPreps to find golf. There are no scores. We’ve tried to get coaches to put that information in so it can get to the media, it just hasn’t worked.
So in my mind, the vision of iWanamaker is to have a place where you can go to see where teams are playing, who’s playing and then in the end, seeing the results of those events as they were scored. You can find out which player won that particular event and iWanamaker provides that as an opportunity for everyone across the state. It also has, if you’re registered in that system, you can go to rankings. Right now we have over 500 golfers in iWanamaker that are ranked. Now, it’s not legitimate because there are some schools that have opted out or are not doing it, so you don’t have every player there. But you have close to 500, so that’s the place to go to see how you measure up prior to regionals.
In my mind, the benefits far outweigh the complaints we get about it. The biggest complaint we get about it is coaches who are asked to score. Some of those things are real and legitimate, but some of them are excuses as well. It just changes the culture of when coaches go to an event and what they do and what they’re responsible for.
Q: Do you see any deficiencies with iWanamaker where you sit and if so, do you have a plan to try and get those resolved in the near future?
Robinson: Yeah, I think I know after observing a few matches this year, where the frustration occurs. If you don’t have everyone on board then you cannot get an event set up. Every school that is participating in the event has to have its roster updated and then the person hosting that event has to know the order of which those players are playing. In other words, their No. 1 golfer, No. 2 golfer, No. 3 golfer, No. 4 golfer has to be delineated in iWanamaker. It’s actually an easy process to execute, but what happens is that a lot of our coaches are either working careers and coaching is like everything else, secondary. Or they’re teachers, where coaching is secondary.
They just have a lot on their plate. I get it. If they’re coaching the day before they have an event and they’re trying to figure out who’s going to go to the event or maybe they’re having a playoff, the last thing on their mind is making sure the host of that tournament knows who’s playing. So a lot of times they’ll arrive at an event with players that the host doesn’t know is in the event. Now it’s a scramble to get them in the right place. It’s that type of thing that does take place. Those are some of the legitimate reasons that I say exist.
What I’d like to do knowing that is just maybe only require for leagues one event or two events is all they need to have live-scored. And the rest they can relax and do their thing. But really make an effort to have one or two of those events. Maybe one in the middle and maybe one at the end which could dictate their seeding, that are reporting their events and live-scoring. Make it available to parents and administrators so people can see what’s going on because there’s going to be some buzz around it. Maybe that’s where it goes. That’s a compromise.
The mandate is your roster has to be in, the hosted event has be in and the event has to be live-scored. The live-scoring is preventing people from getting to the first step most of the time.
