JustRules

I also think it's a double standard. There are a lot of songs we listened to back in the day that were explicit and maybe not so subtle. Pour Some Sugar on Me is one that comes to mind. I'm sure there are many others. Some of the rap and hip hop music is just more direct but is it really any different?

HS varsity most pay $75-$85/game. I"m not sure of sub-varsity since I don't work it any longer but I believe it's $50-$60/game. I do know one conference does double headers on Saturday morning with freshman/JV and they pay $125 to work both games.

This was about 20 years ago so glad to hear the leadership is still similar. The other thing they did well was have a board member on the field for every game to help with the league-specific rules. One challenge of youth football is each league has their own set of rules in addition to the normal HS rules. For example, the LBs couldn't be any closer than 3 yards from the LOS and DL had to line up heads up on the OL (no gaps). The board member addressed those things so the licensed officials could focus on the rules we already knew. If anything got crazy I think the board member would have addressed it, but there were rarely any issues.

The biggest gap we have in 5-man is downfield. Pylons aren't covered well during long plays. Goal line is hard to cover when the ball is snapped between the 10 and 15. FG and tries lose a wing. The C could take the other upright so the wings stay on the LOS, but it would make more sense for the deep officials to take the uprights. On punts you would already have 2 deep officials ready. Free kicks wouldn't be different regardless of C/deep because everyone goes to a spot to start.

If we were to add a 6th official it would make much more sense to put them in the defensive backfield rather than the CJ position. I have never heard of any officials at any level adding the CJ any earlier than the 8th official. The NFL moved the umpire there so they do it with 7. There has been discussions with going to 7 officials for later rounds of the tournament so I know there is at least interest in exploring it. I would love to see us move in that direction.

The rule of thumb is work high school varsity football for 5 years before trying to do college. The reason for that is muscle memory is such a huge part of being good at this. The more you've seen a pulling guard on the edge trying to block a DB without holding or a receiver and defender hand fighting as they run down the field or had to rule on a close catch/no catch on the sideline or a runner breaking the plane of the goal line before his knee touches the better you'll be. But there are definitely exceptions to that rule. As for getting in there is no magic formula, but generally you are doing the following things. First, contact the supervisor of officials for a local D3/NAIA/JC conference and request an application. If you know someone already working in the conference they should be able to help you with that as well. Attend any local clinics or study group meetings in your area as often as you can. This helps you learn more about college officiating and also connect with college officials. Networking and advocacy help play a big part as well. In Indy we have a D2 and D3 official who host a monthly study group in Carmel January - June. A group of D1 officials host a bi-weekly study group at Butler during the season. If you are closer to Chicago I believe they do similar things there. The IFOA hosts a clinic every February for college officials. It's open to anyone interested so you could definitely attend that next year. The study groups are also open to any HS official who wants to learn more. There are also larger clinics all over the country and you could go broke attending as many as you wanted. The Marian clinic is $90 and it's one day. Some of the clinics are multiple days and include scrimmages and cost over $1000. Once you get started with that you work college JV games and scrimmages to get on field experience and work with experienced officials. Every year the local D3 conference has at leas some turnover and hires from the list of applicants who have been doing all the things above. There are examples of officials who have tried for 3 or 4 years and never get that varsity opportunity. There are some working varsity games their second year. Like anything there are multiple factors. The key is to have a mentor who can help you. Geography plays a big role. It helps to be in an area where there are already a lot of college officials. Believe it or not someone in South Bend has a hard time because they aren't in the footprint of any conference. They are surrounded by small college conferences, but they are 4-5 hours form many of the schools in those conferences. There is only 1 B1G official in South Bend and he's the only college official there so there are no study groups. You would have to travel a lot with little or no compensation to break in. It's not impossible but you would have to work a lot harder.

No they will not because they fouled before recovery. The basic spot of that foul would be the previous spot if R accepts it (they obviously would). If the kick was touched by K before going 10 yards R could chose to decline the penalty and R would get the ball at the spot of touching. You said it went well more than 10 yards so that doesn't apply in this example. I only used it to demonstrate there are always many factors that go into a situation like this. And the types of things discussed in those huddles. Usually we are trying to agree on the facts and then applying rules to those facts to make sure we get it right.

Your point about potential schedule conflicts is valid. I have several officiating friends in Illinois and they've never mentioned it. Maybe they get the Friday playoff assignments. Keep in mind very few officials advance in the tournament and Illinois with a qualifying tournament have even fewer who get a playoff game. But that would have nothing to do with advancement in college. We've just had a very good run of guys who have advanced. When I started there was only 1 NFL official in Indiana and maybe 4 or 5 Big Ten officials. Now there are 6 NFL officials in Indiana (most who went through B1G), 5 B1G, 5 MAC, and 5 MVFC officials. Most of that group were HS and/or small college officials when I started. Many of them probably worked your middle school games back in the day. It's very hard to advance past the D3 ranks as spots are more limited and competitive as you move up. The men and women who make it to the D1 or NFL level have put in a lot of time and effort and energy and been scrutinized heavily to even get to that level. Then the level of evaluation once you get there is even higher. Just because they aren't publicly reprimanded doesn't mean they aren't addressed. Some of you have attended the IFOA clinic in June. Our clinicians there usually include these NFL and college officials in addition to the top high school officials around the state. It would be like the state coaches clinic having Mark Nagy, Frank Reich, Mike Tomlin, Jeff Brohm, Urban Meyer, Brian Kelly, Kurt Mallory (ISU), Chris Keevers (UIndy), Mike Leonard (Franklin), and Mark Henninger (Marian) as your presenters every year. We are very blessed.

The interesting part of that is a lot of the freshman/JV games on Saturday have a hard time finding officials because so many are working youth leagues. Do I go work a freshman game and get paid $50-$60 for 90-120 minutes on the field. Or do I work 4 youth league games and get paid $200 for 3-4 hours of work? It definitely goes both ways. I agree moving these games to Saturday has affected both groups in finding officials.

The leagues I worked when I started were pretty good (Brownsburg and HSE) because the leagues didn't tolerate poor behavior from coaches or parents. I did some CYO as well and don't remember that being bad. But when my son played CYO I saw nasty behavior from both coaches and parents. The kids just wanted to play football. Where I saw really bad behavior was rec league soccer and baseball where the officials were often 14-18 year old kids. I was stunned.

We'd love to have you! Contact the IHSAA and take the license exam!

The players didn't want to play for the coach at the time at LN. Good coach but they didn't mesh. They had 50 players that last year he was there. When Mallory took over he had 120 players in the weight room that Spring. There were football players who wanted to play football. They just didn't want to play for the previous coach. There may have been some defection to LC for some players, but I doubt it was more than a handful. Tre Roberson lived in a neighborhood his senior year that feeds into LN based on the garage sign I saw in my neighborhood. No idea if he lived somewhere else to start HS and stayed at LC because of that.

I happen to know the crew working the Shelbyville New Pal game. They are driving from Evansville!! When there was a possibility the game wouldn't be played I expect they weren't heartbroken. Blowouts are the hardest games to work because you have to work harder to concentrate every play. Close games are fun because it's easy to concentrate. And they aren't stressful because you don't care how each play or the game ends. They are just another play.

The correct call would depend on the actual facts of the play. You are providing the facts as you saw them and believe the crew signaled them but that may not be the same facts the crew used to make their decision. Based on the facts as you know them (free kick touched ground and went more than 10 yards before K recovered, K committed a personal foul prior to recovery, R committed a personal foul as well) the right enforcement would depend on the timing of R's foul. You ultimately land at the same spot but for different reasons. If R's personal foul was live you have offsetting penalties and rekick from the K40. If R's personal foul was a dead ball foul, you enforce both starting from the previous spot and replay the down. Go back 15 for K's live ball foul and forward 15 for R's dead ball foul and rekick from the K40.

The worst area for these abuse issues are youth leagues. The coaches are often less trained and have nothing to lose. A high school coach has to answer to an athletic director and crossing the line too many times could cost him his job. Parents and fans at youth games are also much closer and can more easily engage the officials. In HS we are largely separated from the fans. We usually don't hear individual comments during games and rarely does anyone confront us on our way off the field. Many locations we don't cross through fans to get to our locker room. I think we are losing more officials who are working the youth games than those working primarily high school games due to abuse reasons. It seems most who leave the high school field are advancing in college (we have a disproportionate number of college officials working D2 through NFL compared to nearby states), work/family demands, relocation, or age/health reasons.

Lawrence North started in 1976 and it's first graduation class was 1978. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawrence_North_High_School

A lot happened obviously on the play and several different factors would determine the outcome. Much of what you shared rarely happens on the same play so it's not something the crew deals with on a regular basis. They may have gotten it wrong, but it was probably doing the best they could at the time with what they had. They probably couldn't deal with giving the ball to K because of their original targeting foul and recent rule changes have tried to prevent rekicks. I'm pretty confident there was some kind of action on the play that resulted in the second foul as part of the discussion. My only other thought was if the R signaled the wrong way first and then corrected it so there was only one foul but confusing signals.

As a district Lawrence Township grew more than any district in Marian County last year. I don't know where they are coming from because there isn't a ton of new development in the district, but the superintendent alluded to the fact that students are transferring back from private schools and moving in from other districts. It's one of the most diverse districts in the state in many measures with tons of success stories. I found this demographic information. From 2013-14 to 2018-19 the district grew from 14,871 to 16,035, an 8% growth. https://www.ltschools.org/about/district-profile/demographics

Even then it's not automatic choice. You are pre-assigned to one of the schools and have to go through some process to attend the other one unless you in the immersion program. You are already mapped to LN. But you still don't have a direct bus route to LN. You either have to arrange your own ride or take the shuttle to and from LC.

Open enrollment to an extent. You are assigned to an elementary, middle and high school depending on neighborhood. There is some ability to choose schools, but I believe there is a process to it if you want to go where you aren't assigned. You can't have 1200 students at one elementary school and 200 at another. If you don't attend the school where you are assigned you are responsible for transportation. They do offer a shuttle between the high schools so students who live in an LC neighborhood but attend LN can take the bus to LC and then shuttle to LN. The issue is they miss the first 20 minutes of the first period and last 15 minutes of the last period. I've heard most kids try to carpool with others in their neighborhood. I think the middle schools have a similar shuttle.

I wasn't sure who they competed with in most sectionals so I looked up the boys sectionals from last year. It's almost always other Marion County schools. It was a heavy dose of Tech, North Central, Cathedral, Chatard, and Warren Central. Brebeuf, Heritage Christian, Scecina showed up a couple times. The only non-Marion County schools I found were New Pal (Baseball), Shelbyville (Swimming) and Mount Vernon (Track and Wrestling). Track was the one real oddball. It was the only sport where LN and LC were split. LN was with a bunch of small schools in Hancock, Madison, and east. LC was with most of the same other Marion County schools. I didn't look at the girls sports, but I assume they are similar.

When you have 15-17 year olds you never know how they will behave/react. I've worked LC games and never had any issues with the coaching, leadership or discipline. That includes the current coaching staff and team. I'm not saying you are wrong with what you saw Friday night because I didn't see it, but it's easy to be critical from afar. I believe they may have lost their starting quarterback so their backup may not have been as good. And Center Grove can make a lot of teams look bad. But they are also 2-4 because the MIC is very good!

The district is divided so theoretically they are equal socio-economically and ethnically. There are Geist neighborhoods that go to LC and some that go to LN. Both schools have plenty of students from that area. Both schools also draw students the poorer areas of the district. It's not a solid north/south or east/west line. Families do have some level of school choice and will choose one school over the other. LC has a phenomenal performing arts program so some families chose them for that reason. Students in the Spanish Immersion program attend LN regardless of where they live. LN tends to do better in other sports. I remember hearing a couple years ago they won sectional in 9 of the 16 sports where they participate. I would say that's a pretty good ratio. I'm also sure they are losing students to HSE/MV and private schools but overall the district is growing. They have an outstanding superintendent and administrative staff in both schools. They have strong academic programs and the McKenzie Career Center is the envy of most other districts in the state. It has everything from auto body to culinary arts to engineering to bio-medical and one of the top robotics teams in the country. The MIC is very competitive. The teams at the bottom of the MIC are still very good and deserving of their top 20 Sagarin ratings. Just because LC didn't look very good against WC doesn't mean they aren't a very good team. If they played in almost any other conference except the MIC or HCC they would likely compete for the conference championships. 3 of LC's losses were by a combined 10 points. All of LN's losses have been within 2 scores. They aren't that far off.

If the acts are simultaneous or after discussion you determine you had two fouls you could call both with just the one flag. There doesn't absolutely have to be 1 foul per flag but ideally there will be. I'm going to use K and R since that's the official designation in the rule book. The K foul was definitely a live ball foul and they didn't get the ball with clean hands so there is no way they should end up with a new series. If after discussion they determined R also committed a personal foul it will vary depending on live ball/dead ball. If it's live then the penalties will offset and K will rekick from the 40. If it was dead then the team K foul would be enforced previous spot and replay the down. Then you enforce R's dead ball personal foul and end up back at the 40 anyway. Rekick. The only way R ends up with the ball is if their foul was a dead ball foul and K's recovery was in the neutral zone (between the 40 and 50). By declining the foul K is guilty of first touching and R can take the ball at that spot. Their dead ball personal foul would then be enforced and R would have 1st and 10 from that spot. The only way R gets the ball at the spot of recovery is if there was first touching in the neutral zone and both fouls were dead ball fouls. You said K targeted before the recovery so that doesn't sound likely. But if the facts the crew had were both dead ball fouls and K recovered in the neutral zone then they got it right. You have other permutations of this based on timing of the fouls in relation to recovery and live/dead and multiple combinations. That's what can lead to long conversations piecing all those facts together. Once you have the facts you can then enforce as defined in the rules.

Double booking happens because crews contract games directly with ADs. Most aren't assigned by a third party. Records are sometimes loosely kept and sometimes lost if there is crew turnover. These games are also booked years in advance (we have a game in 2025 booked already) so the 5 guys on the crew now aren't necessarily the same when the game was booked. When crews split up sometimes they agree to take a set of games and there could have been a miscommunication. We had a game on our schedule a couple years we planned to work but were contacted by another school in the Spring (VERY smart by the AD!) we were still coming and we didn't have it on our schedule. Our referee found the email where he confirmed it and it was before we confirmed the other game. It was a miscommunication on his part. He asked me if we were open and we were at the time, but he never confirmed with me that he took the game. We took the game confirmed first and found another crew for the other game before contacting them. The AD was very happy he still had a crew and had no issue with it. Confirmed here could mean the crew accepted it 5 years ago. It could also mean the AD confirmed earlier this week with the crew and they still failed to show. That is unethical and could be dealt with harshly. This happens often with schools too. They book 2 crews for a game and sometimes the crew doesn't find out until the week of the game. The schools often pay both crews if they recognize the mistake was theirs, but the other crew doesn't always get another game on short notice.