As the famous Friday Night Lights prepare to come on for tonight's high school football playoff games, it is becoming harder and harder to recruit enough referees to allow youth sports to continue, News Radio 1200 WOAI reports.
The problem, according to Michael Fitch, who heads the Texas Association of Sports Officials, is out of control parents.
He says referees and officials are tired of the insults, berating, and sometimes outright threats they get at games from parents.
"This last week in the Dallas Ft. Worth area, there was an incident where some parents followed the officials from a Junior High game into the parking lot," he said. "They surrounded the officials and threatened them and threatened to slash their tires."
This was at a middle school football game.
He says the abuse is getting worse, and starts in the lower grades and escalates from there.
"Most associations do not hold parents accountable, they let them get away with it," he said. "Then when they get away with it with the eight, nine, and ten years olds, when the parents get up into high school, they think they can continue to act the same way."
He says every parent thinks their child is the next Earl Campbell, and is poised to receive a full-ride athletic scholarship. When the official throws the flag on their child, the parents see that as the end of the child's, and their, dreams of glory, and the referee has to pay for the damage he has done to their child.
Fitch says it isn't to the point where the future of youth sports is in danger from a lack of officials, but it could get that way.
"We found that for every ten officials that start, by the third year, there will only be two of them left," he said. "That is what is really hurting us, is that we can't retain the officials."