> no one wanted to do it because they've heard since they were 8 years old how bad working with your hands are and they should get an office job

In my area, youth soccer referees are being offered $50/hr and the age requirement has been lowered to 13 for U8 matches. They still have trouble getting enough people. Every soccer club in the area sends out multiple emails to parents asking them to get their teenagers to go through the USA Soccer online training program. But you can see that 90% of the kids that end up doing so are from low-income families for which college was probably not an option anyway.