First, I’ve decided to move my football officiating posts to this blog. Not sure why I thought it would be a good idea to have it separate from this one, but I think it’s just silly now, so here it is.
Tonight was my first ‘Friday Night Lights’ game of the season.
That book and TV show title seems to have just become the phrase for Friday night high school varsity football and it also seems very much appropriate.
The lights do seem to shine a bit brighter on Friday night, to be sure.
Friday night varsity games mean having a full pre-game meeting with the officiating crew, discussing mechanics and responsibilities. It was nice to go over things, just to get clarification on things and to know what everyone’s intentions and expectations were going to be. I felt like it helped better prepare me for the game.
One of the really nice things about varsity games compared to other levels is that, as a Head Linesman, you get to work with an experienced chain crew. On other nights, you have to really spend a lot of time managing the kids enlisted to work the line-to-gain equipment. Tonight, I had three guys who really knew what to do and one guy who was learning from the other three. With the exception of having to have the down number corrected on one down, they were pretty much flawless on the night and allowed me to really keep my eyes on the players.
It was nice. Thanks fellas!
The game was a complete mismatch. The opening kickoff was returned for a touchdown, setting the tone for the evening. Two long passes and a punt return later, and it was 28-0 pretty quickly.
One of the more-interesting plays came on a kickoff following one of the many first-half scores. As the ball appeared to be heading for the end zone and a touchback, the player back to receive the kickoff just let the ball go. Of course, the ball took and funny bounce an avoided breaking the plane of the goal line, whereupon athletes starting unsuccessfully attempting to pick the ball up and run and then trying to fall on the ball.
Somewhere in the mess, we ended up with a touchback. Though a whistle was blown potentially a second early and there was mass confusion by most as to what happened, it was decided that a touchback was the result of the play. At halftime, the referee thought he might have blown his whistle too quickly. The play happened near my sideline, so I was nearby, but didn’t have the angle. However, from where I was standing and watching, I thought we had a touchback as well, so I guess all is well as far as I’m concerned.
Of course, then I had to have an inadvertent whistle.
I had been doing a very good job, if I do say so myself, on controlling my whistle and not blowing dead anything unless the play was to my side and I had the view of the ball. So, it was very, very odd for me when I was looking at a player on the ground holding the ball while I came in from the sideline blowing my whistle, only to then turn my head downfield and see a pile of players and the ball being spotted by the line judge about five yards further than where I had just spotted the ball myself.
I STILL would tell you I saw the ball, but it was obvious to everyone else that the play had gotten by me somehow. The fortunate part is that I was so slow on my whistle on my phantom play that the actual play was being blown dead maybe half-a-second after my whistle. Hence, we didn’t really have an inadvertent whistle, but it was not a proud moment for me. In fact, it may have been my grossest error so far in football officiating.
Later in the first half, the visiting team, now up 35-0 and with less than a minute left before halftime, ran a pass play that ended up getting near the goal line. Fortunately, I was keeping with the play pretty well and was able to see the receiver attempt to spin out of a tackle and stretch for the goal line, only for his butt to hit the ground with the ball half a yard short of the goal. I came running in while whistling loudly and pointing to the ground.
At least I had a good call to balance the bad one.
