Official shortage

I missed Altoona-Midway’s home opener because of the 2:30 start time today. For me it was too late to stay up and too early to wake up. It turns out that was not the only game affected by the shortage of officials. Crest’s 8-man game with Chase County also started at 2:30.

Until the WuFlu hit before the 2021 season, most football games not played on Friday night were because of lack of stadiums. This was a serious problem in Wichita, where the seven public schools shared three stadiums. The larger suburban districts had one stadium for two or three schools. Thursday night football was a thing in Wichita, and to a lesser extent in the Kansas City area.

The official shortage is not as noticeable there, but has become apparent in the rural areas. Turnover was higher than usual because of the WuFlu on top of the low pay and fan abuse. If this a problem during football season, what is basketball season going to be like? There are many more basketball than football teams, so even with smaller crews, there is a greater demand for basketball officials.

The almost official end of summer…

is not going back to school or Labor Day, but the 100 mile yard sale the weekend after. Hundreds of people between Independence, Coffeyville and Bartlesville put out their junk. Since this did not happen the last two years, there will be lots of buyers. Unfortunately, auctions and yard sales are becoming a thing of the past so there may not be as many sellers.

Urinal Delivery

I miss my Sunday ritual of going to the Woodshed in southtown, and reading the Sunday papers while eating sausage, egg and cheese biscuits. Unfortunately there is no longer a Sunday paper to be had in town. The Urinal dropped its Sunday edition in 2010, when it switched from being a daily to a three days a week paper. The Reporter followed in 2018 when they went to all mail delivery, replacing the Sunday paper with a Saturday edition. This spring, the Kansas City Star stopped delivering on Sundays, having dropped weekday delivery before I moved here in 2006. The Tulsa World pulled out this spring, taking the USA Today with it. The Sammiches aren’t bad, but I can read the online editions at home or better yet do without.

Sales of the city papers had dropped over the last five years. The price of the papers doubled to four dollars for the Sunday edition. This wouldn’t have been too bad if the papers had last night’s news or even yesterday’s news. I don’t know where the extra money went, but not much went to the stores and even less went to the drivers delivering the paper.

Urinalism is spreading

The Parsons Sun and Chanute Tribune will no longer have the scores of the local football games in Saturday’s edition because the papers are being printed in Joplin, Missouri about 100 miles away. This means they appeared in today’s paper. Meanwhile, the Independence Reporter had a front page story about last Wednesday’s Wilson County Comission meeting.

News is supposed to be new. For daily newspapers this should be inexcusable. I guess since the big city papers pulled out of town earlier this year, they feel we will put up with untimely service. Have they looked around and figured out how many people aren’t getting any newspaper?

Official shortage

Altoona-Midway crushed Chetopa 46-0 in a game that ended midway through the third quarter due to the 45 point mercy rule in 6-man and 8-man football in Kansas. They will host Waverly in a game that will start at 2:30 Friday because of a shortage of officials. Southeast Kansas has not had the problems the rest of the state has had with having enough officials to cover all of the games. This is the first time a football game has had to be rescheduled in the area because of a lack of officials.