“You just can’t pay me enough to work overtime”

Joe Conte, the San Gabriel Valley Football Officials Association liaison to the CIF-Southern Section, met Tuesday night with the officiating crew working last week’s Temple City-Arcadia game. I’ll have a much more detailed story in Thursday’s paper, but here’s the gist and some noteworthy quotes.

Conte said he asked each official if they made a comment about overtime pay. The first four officials asked answered “no” and the fifth official (the fellow working the Temple City sidelines) got up and said: Yes, I did say that. The exact quote was “You just can’t pay me enough to work overtime.” That quote was relayed to someone who asked about overtime.

“The officials just made a bad decision,” Conte said. “There was a miscommunication between the schools and officials. The school should have told them (the officials) before the game, halftime, or in the third quarter and it was never asked.

“It was their (the officials’) impression we don’t do overtime. But it was a mistake on the officials part. They should have asked about overtime. They could have said, ‘Hey, it’s 14-14, at halftime. Are we going to have overtime?’ What’s the situation? None of that was done. The officials just made a bad decision. That’s all I can say. They were not informed properly. I don’t know where they got that we don’t do overtimes because there must have been six overtimes this weekend.”

Conte said a board meeting next Tuesday will decide if the officiating crew will be reprimanded even further.

As of now, the five officials will not work any Temple City or Arcadia games the rest of the year and possibly into next year. Conte said the officials association will send a letter of apology to both schools.

“I don’t know what what I can tell you,” Conte said. “It’s going to take us a long time to live through this. I was in disbelief. I could not believed it happened.

“It’ll take years to get over this. This will hang with our unit for years and years and years.”

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