JustRules

As long as I've been an official (20+) years the NFL philosophy has been "a blade of grass". They aren't going to be picky on that unless both players come out and communicate they are on. The NFL had a rule you couldn't cover an eligible number unless you reported (similar to reporting as eligible). I don't remember if they added the reporting option or removed it. It could be a foul whether or not the covered receiver goes downfield. College has a very similar philosophy of "blade of grass" so you won't see it called often there. Since you can cover an eligible number in NCAA you could also rule both on if putting one in the backfield creates an illegal formation (5 in the backfield). This is usually treated as a talk to unless it's really bad or you have already been warned.

We were one of the last states to add a mercy rule so if we mirror anyone we were not in the leadership role.

Playing rules yes. Recruiting and contact rules very different. I think NAIA may technically have some rules but I'm not sure how much they enforce them. One of the college fields I've worked on has both HS and college hash marks because it's a community field used for both. Every time I've worked there I've put the ball on the HS hash for a college game at least once. The snapper very politely reminds me of my error.

I used to be him! My parent's basement couch has a notch in the wood frame of their couch from a clipboard I may or may not have thrown when I was 15 after my team lost due to a horrible officiating call.

I love when I talk with a player or coach and explain how we read run/pass just like they do so it helps us read and react on a play and where to put our focus (and that's different for each official). It's not just watching the play.

Replay could have helped with this too. No matter how hard we try it's impossible to have a perfect game. You need to count EVERY play. If there are 180 plays in a game you have to count 180 times. If you do miss one you only hope it's not one where the team has more than 11 and if it is you hope it's 2nd and 8 in the middle of the first quarter and not at an instance like this. Of course if it happened on 2nd and 8 in the middle of the first quarter nobody is going to bring it up n public. I know many officials who count players while watching a game on TV! I finally broke myself of that habit, but I do often still count for 4 in the backfield on the offense and look at the formation to see if they have trips, balanced or 21. It's weird.

You do realize the knee is not the only body part that makes a runner down? Anything but a hand or foot. In your own picture it appears the helmet is on the ground so that shows you are already incorrect on one of your facts. The ball is already loose in that photo so we don't know how long the helmet was on the ground before the ball became loose. That's why you can't use a still photo as evidence. These types of plays are generally not conclusive on Hudl video. That type of precision is not what coach videos are trying to capture. You may be 100% correct but it's very unlikely these videos are conclusive either way. And stills definitely don't prove anything. Your best argument is you and everyone you talked with fell it was a fumble. Unfortunately only one opinion matters and that was the unbiased person on the sideline who had a great view. He had the best chance of getting it right.

FBS games take on average 3 hours and 25 minutes. D3 games take on average 2 hours and 45 minutes. Same rules. Same timing/clock procedures. Similar number of plays, penalties, incomplete passes (things that stop the game). There are only two differences and they contribute significantly to the longer game times: Replay TV time outs They keep trying new rules to speed up the game. They help marginally. The two things above are never going away.

Is your answer, "find a better observer"?

that's when you wish you had a mic to the referee huddle after a play where the defense sacks the QB for an 8 yard loss on 3rd and 1. Referee: Whadyagot? Wing: I have an illegal procedure on #12 offense Referee: We don't have such a foul. What did he do? Wing: He left early. Referee: So we have a false start Wing: Yeah, that's what you call it Referee: So why didn't you kill it before the snap? Wing: Uh...I don't know Referee: You're buying the first round tonight. Maybe the second. Referee (over the stadium mic): prior to the snap, false start on the offense, 5 yard penalty previous spot, repeat 3rd down Without a mic you just see the signal and assume it must have been an illegal formation and wonder why the defense accepted the penalty when 4th and 9 is a better option than 3rd and 6. B's coach is legitimately angry and you have to take the berating you are about to receive.

Theoretically if half the teams qualify most of the teams on the bubble would be 5-5. If you had super competitive sectional it's possible someone with a 6-4 doesn't get in. But if you put in a system like I suggested, that takes Sagarin out of it and you are basing your qualifier on sectional record only. It essentially makes the entire season (at least the sectional regular season games) an all-in format.

I would say the more feeders you have the better. You can keep more kids in the system playing. Some kids develop later than others so the kid in a single middle school system who is small in middle school might opt out of football. But if the district is split into 3 or 4 middle schools he may have more of a chance to play. If he starts to get stronger or faster in 9th grade and he's still playing you still have him. If he quit in 7th grade he's now playing tennis or soccer or running cross country. This has often touted as an advantage especially for the parochial schools. Chatard had 4 or 5 kids who started as QBs in 8th grade while a rural school with a similar enrollment had 1. You go that deep at each position you are going to have kids with more experience.

I agree. Most of the Indy MIC/HCC and even Mid-States schools could have very good teams but get knocked out by 1 or 2 other teams in their sectional because of the local competition. Just because that happens 2 or 3 years in a row doesn't indicate anything. Many of those games could go either way. This applies to schools like Roncalli, Chatard, Brebeuf, Triton Central, Decatur Central, Tri-West, Danville, Lebanon, etc. Because of the talent the same team could lose in the first or second round of sectional or win state. Even teams that struggled this year like North Central and Pike have very talented players on their teams.

I've worked or been to games the past several years at Carmel. The crowd is always big and into the game. The team is full of great athletes. Like many other teams in central Indiana they play very good teams every week and often in early rounds of the tournament. The last3 years their tournament losses are to Ben Davis, Brownsburg, and Westfield, all very good teams! I would hardly call what is happening at Carmel as struggling.

As ridiculous and I think these rules are they've been in place for probably 10 years and you never see that repeated PIs. Your best option is to actually play the ball and get an INT or incomplete pass. You'll occasionally see an obvious DPI inside the 10 if someone is beat, but you can get that on a long pass as well where the defender knows if he doesn't interfere he's giving up a TD. 15-yards is better than 6.

There are many ways you could implement a seeded system. One suggestion I would make is have each team's schedule based on the sectional you are assigned to (5A/6A would probably play a regional schedule rather than a sectional schedule). This would give you 6-7 sectional games. You then have 3-4 non-sectional games (assuming 10 game regular season) to continue traditional rivals. That way qualifying and seeding is based entirely on your regular season results. You could have the top 4 teams from each sectional/region qualify (6 if you want to have more teams participate and the top 2 teams have byes) play with #4 at #1 and #3 at #2. If you don't want to start with teams you played during the regular season you could have #1 from one sectional play #4 from the next sectional and so forth. The higher seeded team in regional and semi-state host and have some kind of tie-breaker or top/bottom bracket to determine home team. I played multiple sports in a very similar system. The excitement it creates is the 3-4 weeks of the season and you are playing for a playoff spot and seeding. The same excitement you see around games like Owen Valley-Gibson Southern, Brownsburg Ben Davis, etc. you'll see in those late season games. Today they are playing for the win so they aren't meaningless. But you extend the excitement around tournament games into the regular season. The other big benefit is you are rewarded in the tournament for your success during the season. There are instaces of highly ranked teams traveling to 0/1/2 win teams in the first round. This week Fishers in hosting HSE. Granted it's a short drive and the environment will be heavy with fans from both teams, but HSE has earned the right to host that game. Same with Whiteland at Franklin and New Prairie at Hobart. It's also crazy that Center Grove has to travel to Columbus North, Brownsburg at Avon, and Sheridan at Hagerstown. The visiting team probably still wins those games, but they have definitely earned the right to host the sectional final game over their opponents due to their regular season schedule. Granted there is a very good chance they wouldn't be facing those opponents if it was a qualifier with seeding. Under the current system the main thing an 0-4 team is playing for is the HOPE they get to draw the other 0-4 or 1-3 team in the first round. If they have that record because of injuries and have players coming back they will have the same hope under either system. It's pretty rare for a team to start 0-4 and make a tournament run. It does happen but it's not enough to base your post season tournament on it. The MAIN reason the IFCA won't support a change is a large number of coaches want to have hope they will draw other poor teams if they have a bad season. No other competition anywhere outside of Indiana has a tournament like this at any level of any competition.

The issue here is a player who is replaced during a dead ball and return during the same dead ball. And a substitute who enters and becomes a players can't leave during the same dead ball. You could potentially have 22 total instances of it in this play if the entire unit is replaced. It's a foul for illegal substitution and would be a dead ball foul as soon as it happens. It would only be enforced as one penalty though. Rule 3-7-3 if you have a rule book.

Saw a game list night where a team tried to do this on a try. It was correctly addressed by the crew. Coach said in all his years of coaching he had never heard the explanation.

This may very well be a correct ruling of a first down but absolutely horrible mechanics and optics for the crew. Doing what they did warrants the criticism they are getting. We often say you would rather get the right call and look bad than get the wrong call and look good. That's not true in this case. Here is what I think happened. Crews often use the lines on the field to rule on first down. If they started this series with the ball touching the back of the B22 then if the ball reaches the B12 it's a first down. From this angle it clearly appears the ball reaches the back of the B12. The R likely knows this but decides to do the measurement as a PR move since it's 4th down in the 4th quarter of a close game. Once they extend the chains and it goes beyond the ball he realizes the chains are wrong. The next thing he should do is verify the clip was put down correctly. It's possible it could have been clipped on the back of the line but placed on the front of the line by the H. If you can confirm the clip is on the back of the line and still long then check the back stake and make sure it's in the correct place as well. If it doesn't go to the back of the B22 the clip may not have been placed on the right spot on the chain. This is all assuming the clip guy (maybe paid with a hot dog and soda at halftime) put the clip on that set of downs. This is also all assuming the crew the checked the chains before the game. We have chains that were a few links too short or too long and we had to correct them. As Bob mentioned the measurement mechanics were horrible on this play and contributed heavily to the criticism this crew is getting. As soon as you decided to measure the back judge should get down and secure the ball. This crew left it there for anyone to move it. We can't see what's happening back at the B20 where the clip is hopefully located. The L should be there with his foot at the spot where the H should place the clip. The U does grab the front stake like he's supposed to and puts it down on the press box side. That's about the only thing does correctly here. The R should be on the other side and ruling on where the ball is in relation to the stake. He should not touch the ball or the stake before ruling. That is horrible. But I do believe the correct ruling here was a first down. Use the lines on the field. The ball reached the B12 clearly based on the spot. Signal and move the chains. If the coach asks for a measurement tell him we don't need on because the LTG was the back of the B12 and they clearly reached that.

Good pickup by the crew but it was close. The ball was snapped in position 2 (right middle). The edge of the FBZ is about the right hash. The passer was maybe a yard outside of that. Where the crew messed up is the next snap should have also been at position 2. Instead they had it at position 1 (right hash). If they thought the previous snap was position 1 then the passer WASN'T outside the FBZ. Placing it in position 1 also gave the kicker a tougher angle for the FG although he made it. As with most plays several things the officials hedge to process every play, not just the one thing fans want to focus on.

Identify down and distance to anticipate the type of play that may occur. Get your proper depth from the LOS. If we are inside the 20 are you on the goal line or end line? Is your key pressed? Can you key on the T at the snap to determine run/pass. Is the game clock running and should it? If there was an administrative stop you are telling the R we have a hot clock or dead clock. If there was a foul on the previous play you are writing in on your game card for your crew to review on Hudl. If there was a deep run into the side zone or sideline you were there to help clean up and walk players out of an opposing bench. Help rotate in the ball from the wing to the umpire. If there is no visible play clock you are starting your stop watch. Scrimmage kicks have all of these and more for the BJ. So yes there are many jobs a B does in the 20-40 seconds between plays. Counting the defense is at or very close to the top though. I will admit I've had plays where I wasn't able to get my count done for a variety of reasons. But I try to do it every time so I don't miss it when I need it.

I wasn't referring to this crew as being "new" they all have several years of experience. But nobody is perfect. Yes, this was a big mistake that should not be excused. But it also shouldn't prevent them from learning from this mistake and advancing in the future. Your comment basically said this crew should never advance in the tournament ever again. This is the third year for this particular referee in that role which is a key reason they have only worked 1 round in previous years. Advancement is based largely on recognition over performance and they aren't known yet by a lot of coaches. Counting the offense and defense has to happen EVERY play. It's easy to get complacent when you have counted 150 times and always had 11. Have a lapse in concentration and the one (or at least three in this case) and you miss it at the wrong time! Especially when the first two plays they were coming out of time outs you have plenty of time to get your count. If the offense is in hurry up and the defense tries to sub it can be difficult to get your count on time. That wasn't an issue in any of these plays. The young comment was more for the officials we get who quit after 2-3 years working a heavy load of sub-varsity and youth games. Here is a good video that was published recently about the officiating shortage. It includes some data of the losses and why people leave. There is a difference in acknowledging the mistake and saying this crew should never advance in the tournament. Again, it would be like me saying your son was called for a holding foul that brought back a key TD at the end of a game and should never start again.

A slower shift would be OK and this is close. I'm good with the false start. Especially on 4th and less than 5. Your intent is pretty clear. The other example you'll see especially in punt formation is the OL all in a 2-point stance shifting from wide to narrow splits or vice versa. If that's a sudden movement, flag it. If it's slow and deliberate it may still cause the defense to jump but it wouldn't be a false start.

Your kid misses a block or runs the wrong route and you hope he never plays again? Why do we expect officials to be perfect and never makes mistakes? Especially at the HS level coaches, players and officials make mistakes. None of them are intentional. Even the best coaches, players, and officials make mistakes. Attitudes like this contribute to losing officials. It doesn't have to be the direct verbal abuse on the field or threats or acts of violence. Constant, repeated negativity wears on you, especially newer officials who are still learning. Fortunately most people here recognize this wasn't intentional and there is no calling for them to be banned. A suspension would definitely be justified in this case but then move on. The crew will be fine.

In many cases yes, but after watching these plays I'm not sure they had much impact in this case. That doesn't absolve the officials at all, but it make the pain a little less. The second down play a back dropped a wide open TD pass. Third play looks like a miscommunication between receiver and passer on a single coverage route as the pass dropped in an area with no receiver. This is a good crew that made a major mistake at a key point in a game. Do this long enough and it will happen to you. They are young, and I expect they'll be a crew that advances deep into the tournament in the future.