JustRules

Have you started working any games yet this year? Would love to hear your early observations.

The $200k number is a 20-year veteran referee (white hat). Starting officials make about $60-$70k per year. And part-time is only in the sense they may have another job (most do). But they are already putting in at least 10-15 hours each week in video review, quizzes and meetings and then traveling all weekend including more meetings before the game. Unlike sports like baseball, basketball, and hockey that have games every day. NFL officials can only officiate one game per week. I happen to be good friends with several NFL officials. There is nothing part time or on-the-side about how they approach their role.

Even if they did that fans wouldn't like or agree with what they hear. Pereira and Blandino tweet about calls, explain rules, and even call out officials when they disagree with the calls and the response from fans is rabid. It ultimately serves no purpose other than an outlet for fans to complain.

This was one of the most surprising aspects to me when I started officiating. The first time you step on the field or court and have to watch the game differently you realize how little you know and how much you have to focus on the specific play. You don't care about the outcome of the play and just hope you can survive and not get hurt. The more you work the better you get but one thing that doesn't change is you don't care about the outcome of the play or game. It's also why the crew doesn't get excited at the end of a thrilling game. They are just plays and it doesn't matter the outcome.

If you are going to fire/suspend high school officials for incorrect calls you'll see an even larger shortage of officials. We are not D1 or NFL officials for a reason. We will make mistakes. None of them are intentional. I would recommend Potluck attend one of our weekly association meetings or attend a video review session with a crew or tag along with a crew on a Friday night. I bet his/her eyes would be opened wide.

There is no foul in HS for breaking the huddle with 12. That's an NCAA (and possibly NFL) rule. The NFHS rule says that a replaced player must leave within 3 seconds of the substitute entering. The player becomes a substitute when he communicates with any player or gets into formation. If the 12th player enters the huddle just before they break and the replaced player leaves as part of that it's not a foul. The same applies to no huddle teams. If they are lingering for more than 3 seconds with 12 players the official could flag illegal substitution. Depending on how the different groups are lingering it may be tricky to get the count, but it should be easier with the offense. There is a separate requirement for all subs to get inside the 9-yard marks (usually marked by the top of the numbers) before the snap. It's mostly to prevent hide-out plays so most crews don't get that technical if the sub is matched up or obvious to the defense. Based on your description if there are more than 11 players lingering between the backs and receivers for more than 3 seconds they are gaining an advantage as you describe. It should be flagged. Depending on what else is happening there is no guarantee the officials are counting at that point. There are several other things they have to do between plays. I suggest pointing it out to the official on your sideline so he is at least more alert to it.

First, there is no foul called impeding a receiver. I think I know what you are asking though. Before the ball is thrown the defender may block an eligible receiver who is still a potential blocker as much as he wants. He can't illegally block him (i.e. hold, block in the back, blind side block), but he can block him. There is no 5-yard contact rule like the NFL. Once the receiver passes him or is running away from him (i.e. think crossing route) then he can no longer block him. Then it is illegal use of hands and the signal is the same as holding. Once the pass is in the air toward his direction the contact must have stopped or it turns into pass interference.

The IHSAA doesn't invest enough time and energy into their officiating program. I feel they appreciate us and support us, but since they don't have dedicated staff to us, it's hard to give us the attention that's probably required to be effective. They are all good people with a lot of work to do, but until they dedicate someone full time to managing the officiating program things like this will happen. Officials in every state complain about how they are treated by their state association and many of them have dedicated staff to officiating so maybe it wouldn't be any different.

The Indiana mercy rule has the clock run through the try and then stop. It starts again when the kickoff is KICKED. It will not stop for other changes of possession. The only other times it will stop is for team time outs and injuries. I would definitely get behind this. There are a lot of things not well done in the national mechanics book and several other things that need local interpretation or philosophy defined. If kept simple it could be a valuable resource for officials and be another step in the right direction to get us all on the same page.

Talking with coaches and officials in other states that have this, it's a pain. I'm guessing that's why they didn't implement it here. You could end up going back and forth with clock status and everyone gets confused. The advice I've heard from them is if at all possible once you go to the running clock stay with the running clock.

If you take 100 games where the differential is 35 points in the second half you may have 1 or 2 where the losing team can make a legitimate comeback. I'll take 98/99 over 1/2 every time. This is something the IFCA has been discussing and debating the past few years. They all wanted some kind of mercy rule but couldn't agree on the score differential, reasons to stop the clock, restore after it gets to a certain point, etc. This was definitely much more than a 1-hour discussion. I agree with Bobref modifications will be discussed after the year, but I think they came up with a good, simple approach. Our game last night had the mercy rule the entire second half. The winning team ran one series with some of it's starters but thanks to the quarter rule subbed in the rest of the half. The home team got to play with their regular starters most of the second half to get more experience to get better against competition that was more of an equal. Both teams got the ball twice and 3 TDs were scored on those 4 drives. It was exactly why the mercy rule was implemented, and I thought it worked well. If this had been last year I don't think either coach suggests a running clock in the second half. That only seemed to happen if it was a 42+. Good job IFCA!

Based on the few conversations I've had with coaches, most of them don't worry about a couple extra quarters by players in the JV/freshman games under those circumstances. If they are playing the stud freshman who starts at QB in the JV game in the freshman game just so they can win, that's a different story. But I doubt that is a common occurrence. Even if you are turned in and have to forfeit a freshman game is that such a bad thing?

All 100% true statements. It's going to have to be obviously flagrant or automatic before I'm going to eject a player though. They only get 9 games and to effectively take away 2 of those games is significant.

A good example of officiating WITH the rule book and not BY the rule book. You are essentially using the God rule to apply a false start here. If you let this go you'll like end with too many crazy results. You'll be much better off killing this, enforcing the penalty and moving forward.

Generally true but it's not that the ground can't cause the fumble (it can as pointed out by SoIndRef), it's that the runner is down when anything but his hand or foot is touching the ground. You can't fumble a dead ball. I wonder if the ball was coming loose before he hit the ground and it popped away from him when he hit the ground. Or the official was just blatantly wrong. I'm definitely thinking he shouldn't use those words. He should be more specific because generally if what he said happened did happen the runner would have been down. If it was the correct call it's likely one of the two scenarios mentioned above. That's what he should have told the coach.

Targeting is not an automatic ejection in high school. It has be deemed flagrant to be an ejection and those are rare. The IFOA has no authority over anything either way so sending video to them will at best get you a different opinion or supporting opinion (most likely only from the crew) that isn't any more than that. If targeting was not called the IHSAA would not consider an ejection and suspension if it wasn't called on the field.

It's one of those things where it may not meet the exact definition of a false start, but nothing good is going to come of it so you may be better off killing it and calling it a false start. It's different than a player going in motion toward the the line of scrimmage or an illegal shift because everyone didn't get reset after moving. This would definitely be a live ball foul for something (illegal shift because all 11 players weren't set prior to the snap...illegal sub only if he came in right before the snap) so just kill it and prevent anything else more stupid from happening. Use the God rule if anyone questions what you did.

A good friend of mine taught me this one. Some calls aren't right or wrong. They are just calls. The person making the ball is using his/her best judgement at the time with no bias on the outcome. This seemed a little quick to be progress, but I agree it's supportable.

That was unofficially the rule in the past. If both coaches agreed to any kind of running clock at any point we would grant it. The problem is some coaches refused to do it and collectively the coaches in the state didn't feel that was a good rule. They have been trying to agree on a plan for several years and finally found something they could agree on. I think it's a good change.

If they are going to do that they had better expect you to play full speed as well and block your defense. That's why I don't tell the defense to let up in that situation. I just tell people to be smart and that applies to both sides. If the QB drops the ball or mishandles the snap it's a free ball.

In that situation it's a foul if targeting is involved or any other personal foul (i.e. facemask, tripping). The blindside block rule wouldn't apply to them.

if they did the option without special teams, the varsity is only supposed to play the first three groups (37 total plays each side) and "reserves" are supposed to play the last two groups (16 total plays). 99% of the scrimmages probably use that option.

I ignore it too. Just like to point it out occasionally so everyone knows.

That rule has existed for at least the last 20 years so well before any current turf field was installed. It's just been largely ignored by everyone..

Looks wonderful. The field is in violation of NFHS rules though. They require a shadow line wherever a logo covers up one of the 5-yard lines like the 50 in this picture. The reason is for measurements. We need something to use as reference for the clip when the chains are brought out. Fortunately you rarely ever have to measure on turf fields so it's a non-issue to most officials. If we measure we just need to make sure the ball is spotted outside the logo. Very few fields actually have this done.