Regarding the hand shake thing, it's sad that it has come to this. In my experience as a coach I have not witnessed any animosity between teams/coaches and officials during the post game handshake buy hear (from my players) about punches, words etc. exchanged between players when they shale hands yet they are still keeping that portion of the post game which is baffling.
I understand the rationale of protecting the refs but am not sure if this will help. It ought to have the added benefit of protecting some coaches from suspension due to verbal abuse of officials if indeed it does reduce altercations between coaches and officials. So that is good I suppose.
It is a shame though. As a coach sometimes things get a little heated during the game and the post game handshake was a good way for me to reiterate to the officials that I appreciated their efforts and to thank them for it. It also allowed me on many occasions to ask them about a particular call or circumstance and the good ones always took the time to explain it to me which I very much appreciated. If the exchange was civil I found that the vast majority of them were more than willing to spend a minute of two with you giving their perspective. There were times I was able to offer an opinion to how they may have handled the situation differently (without changing the call) in order to keep a situation from escalating which the good ones also seemed to appreciate.
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