Football
Breaking a Ball-Hawking Habit
The desire to rubberneck, gawk, stare and gape is often an involuntary behavior. Humans are innately curious and are often attracted to the most...
Sideline Officials Cannot Just Wing It
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eferees have a great deal on their plate. Before the opening kickoff they perform organizational duties, and conduct the pregame meeting and onfield tasks...
Tips to Help Sideline Officials Look Sharp
When I was a deep official, I would catch flak from my linesman and line judge crewmates. They told me they do most of...
Play Time
By Jeffrey Stern
In an effort to ensure a consistent interval play-to-play and game-to-game, the NFHS Football Rules Committee adopted the 40-second play clock beginning...
Free But Not Easy
By George Demetriou
Although every game begins with a kickoff, free kicks occur much less frequently than passing or running plays. Add the fact the...
Calm on Broken Plays
Coaches, players and fans are allowed to panic when a play goes awry. Officials, on the other hand, must react to broken plays as if they're routine...
Official/Player Communication Influences Conduct
Trying to manage a football game would be nearly impossible without effective and pointed communication. Although managing players is primarily the responsibility of the coaching staff, officials can facilitate the...
Early Movement By Either Team May Call For Flags
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ffensive players are prohibited from committing a false start before the snap. There are two movements that are illegal for all team A players:...
Judgment Necessary at Line of Scrimmage
Judgments are a large part of football officiating. All rules require some degree of judgment. Perhaps the simplest application is determining whether a team has too many players on...
Ditch the Dinosaur Mechanics
The semifinal game was sold out. Although the visitors were seeded lower, their playoff performance made them the favorite. The home team held its...
Literally Lateral
When San Antonio Trinity University used 15 backward passes to score the winning touchdown on the last play of an October 2008 game against...
A Gridiron Geometry Lesson
Laypeople may think there isn’t a big difference between spots, lines and planes, but officials need a clear understanding of those geometry terms. Very briefly, a spot is...
Safety Glasses
The opening kickoff sails over the goalline. The ball is muffed in flight by the receiver and rolls away. The ball is recovered and...
Ball-Watching Afflicts Veterans and Newer Officials Alike
Two huge mistakes that officials can make are ball-watching and officiating air. The former means watching the runner to the exclusion of what’s happening around him. The latter means focusing...
The Best Games Include These Three Elements
Safe, fair and fun.That phrase — that triangle, if you will — contains the ingredients to the best game you’ll ever have. And there...
Roughing the Passer Enforcement
Ordinarily, penalties for roughing the passer are enforced from the dead-ball spot (NFHS) or end of the run (NCAA). But not if a change...
3 “When In Doubt” Judgment Guidelines
According to Webster, judgment is the ability to make a decision. An official’s judgment calls will be questioned more often than his or her...
The 5 D’s Of Football Success
Here's a list of qualities starting with D from Steve Shaw, CFO National Coordinator of Football Officials, that, if employed, can help any official...
It’s a Foul Now or Later (But Not Never)
You observe movement in either line just as the ball is snapped. You know it is a foul, but do you prevent the play...
Foul Trumps Other Fouls
Several fouls are predicated on the hypothesis that a legal forward pass is or was in progress. As a result, several actions that are...
Dead-Ball Officiating in the Side Zone
How does the runner usually react when he’s been tackled? The norm in college and pro football is that runners lay patiently after they...
Before The Flag
No one likes to see a lot of flags thrown. They interrupt the flow of the game and can seem to make it drag...
Manipulation Or Management?
One of the attributes that separates the best referees from their good counterparts is the ability to manage a game. Good game management includes...
The ABCs of A-B-A
T he ABCs of A-B-A A rare and challenging play involves a double change of possession, known as an A-B-A play.
In PlayPic A, the...
