A new sports society is proposing a dramatic change designed to improve college football. The recently formed clubs calls itself University of York Referee Society and will begin the new term officiating all college-level football matches.
President of the society Andrew Case told Vision that ‘the society is aiming to improve the quantity and quality of college referees and to improve the attitude of players towards referees.’ The society has come about after many complaints about the standard of refereeing in college football: ‘I’ve experienced the situation in college football from both points of view, as a player and as a referee, and I felt that there was room for improvement. As a footballer I found that often games were being played without a referee and if we can prevent this happening it should lead to a better quality and fairer standard of game at the college level.’
Complaints have also been raised against the attitudes of players in college football and Case explained that ‘as a ref, I encountered more abuse than was acceptable and witnessed other refs being scared of giving the correct decision due to pressure from players. Hopefully with the structure and refereeing community we will be creating with our meetings and peer assessment, we can help the performance of referees here and give them the backing necessary if they receive unfair criticism, in turn encouraging more people who previously wouldn’t have done, to referee college football.’
So far the society has the support of York Sport President Emily Scott who has backed the cause by saying that ‘greater consistency and quality of officials at any sporting match is obviously something to aspire to and, with college football in particular, this was perhaps something that needed to be addressed’.
She added that the society could work well alongside the current York Sport committee structure: ‘It also complements the work of the College Referees Co-ordinator and will allow more focus on the co-ordination and development of College Sport. It is great to see this passion from students aiming to improve the quality of officiating, through peer mentoring and discussion, which should positively influence the quality of the matches.’
While the University of York Referee Society will currently only work with college football Scott has indicated that should the scheme be successful then we may see the society expanded to include other sports.