Tonight, I headed out of town for my second game of the season, which was the first game of the season for the two sophomore football teams doing battle.
We didn’t have ’sophomore’ football where I went to school. It seems pretty nice for schools to have four football programs. Unfortunately, there are schools in the area which struggle to field enough players for even the varsity squad. My personal experience with the game makes me wish it was more popular among school kids around here. It’s a very unique set of learning experiences you can gain from being part of a football team. That’s really all I have to say about that.
At the sub-varsity level, we work in four-person crews. Also unlike our varsity games is that we are not assigned a position on the field, with the decisions made among the officials when they arrive on site. Since I am starting to be assigned more frequently as an umpire and knowing that people tend to shy away from the umpire position of the four, I was happy to volunteer to be the ‘big man in the middle.’
In the fourth quarter, I got a reminder why many prefer other positions. We’ll get to that in a bit.
Shortly after arriving to the sideline, we were introduced to our clock operator, who appeared to be a player who was not dressing for the game. This would be the first time running the clock at a game. We definitely should have, right then and there, decided to keep the clock on the field or, at the very least, keep that open as an option.
The instructions for running a clock are incredibly simple and should be even more so for anyone somewhat familiar with the game of football. However, it never works out that it’s that simple in execution for those lacking experience in doing it.
The result for us was that, in the first half, the clock oftentimes would start running when the ‘ready for play’ whistle was blown. After some halftime re-instruction from the white hat, the operator did not start the clock on the ready, but also sometimes not at the snap, either. While we did what we could from the field to correct the timing errors as they occurred, for some reason we simply failed to decide to just start keeping time on the field, which was never not an option for us. I guess I didn’t occur. I can say, for me, it really didn’t come to mind.
With one game already under my belt this year and without the nervousness of a Friday night varsity game, I definitely felt that my number of mistakes was much lower tonight than six nights ago.
On a punt, I turned toward the direction of the ball carrier as the last players from the line of scrimmage moved downfield. I saw a very obvious block in the back from some thirty yards away. I didn’t wait to see if the line judge was going to flag the play (which he did) and flung my flag as far in that direction as possible, which was a good ten yards shy of the actual foul. Turns out those flags don’t carry as well as needed.
After the play ended, the white hat thought I and the line judge had two separate fouls, which should tell you how much I failed to get the flag to the spot of the infraction. Normally, the referee will ask you if your flag is “good,” meaning he wants to know if your flag is on the yard line of the foul, which is where it belongs.
When I went to move my flag to the correct yard line, I went parallel to the sidelines and dropped my flag where I wanted it, which was on the same yard line as the line judge’s flag, but fifteen yards away. The right thing to do would be to put the two flags on the same spot, which made sense as soon as it was pointed out to me, which was only a minute or so too late. Oh well.
I had only one other flag on the night, which was for a hold by a tackle on a running play. He had a handful of jersey as the opponent he was blocking attempted to spin away toward the runner. It was a pretty easy call. Plus, my throw of the flag to the spot was PERFECT, as noted by the line judge. Thanks!
Instead of having a bunch of flags tonight, apparently it was meant to be my night to take my first solid shot from a player in my career as an umpire. I had a few plays come near me throughout the night, but this was actually a run which had gone the other way, but somehow came back at me. For the life of me, I couldn’t explain how or why someone came flying into me from behind, but I took a pretty good hit in my lower back by someone wearing a lot more equipment than I was.
It hurt.
We had the normal, “that’s holding” being yelled by various people at various times. I also got a report from one sideline that a coach was complaining about chop blocks, which neither the referee nor myself had seen prior to the complaint, nor afterwards. Could be a ‘definition’ discrepancy between what it is and what the plaintiff thinks it might actually be.
I did have an incident with a defensive player stepping over a player who was still on the ground after being tackled. I quickly got his attention and told him to “not step over a player like that.” He appeared to not even have realized he had done it, so that’s good.
Another teaching opportunity came late in the game. Leading by nine and less than a minute left in the game, the visitors faced a fourth-and-short situation. Before the ball could be snapped, one of the defensive ends feinted toward the offensive line, as if attempting to get someone to jump and, presumably, cause a ‘false start.’
Unfortunately for the player, he encroached on the neutral zone, essentially ending the game by giving the offense a first down without having to run their play. One of the players asked his teammate, “Did you touch anyone?’ I felt it prudent to clear up the misunderstanding.
In high school, I explained, any time a player enters the neutral zone before the ball is snapped, it’s automatically a dead ball and a foul, “which isn’t the case on Sundays. I’m guessing you’re thinking of what you’ve seen watching the Seahawks.”
“Yeah, that and too much playing Madden,” was the response from the player. “Thanks.”
It’s nice to be thanked sometimes.
On the last play of the game, the offensive team was taking a knee to run time, which they had done the prior play. As I had done before the prior play, I yelled to the defense, “If he takes a knee, do not hit him!”
This, apparently, was not clear enough instruction for the nose tackle, who leapt over the center and appeared to try to swat the ball out of the quarterbacks hands as he kneeled. His teammates on the line were a little incredulous, grabbing him quickly and asking, “WHAT are you doing?”
With nobody really taking much of a hit, I didn’t want to punish the kid too severely, but I did also have to inquire, “Why on earth would you do that?”
I don’t really recall what his explanation was, but we both knew it was feeble. I explained to him he could easily get himself ejected from a game for such actions, which would also have him on the bench for the next game. I gathered he understood about as well as your average pre-driving-age kid might understand such things. As I began walking off the field, the kid’s coach started barking at him, “You got to use your head!”
Apparently, nobody was really impressed with his idea. I’m hoping that kills it permanently for future instances.
Two down with a varsity game tomorrow night. Let’s hope I’m feeling as good about my performance tomorrow as I do with tonight’s.
