Preventative officiating involves communicating essential information to players and coaches to help facilitate the game. Sharing critical information with coaches helps them understand game nuances and removes communication barriers. It helps ensure one team does not gain an illegal advantage over the other team within the rules. Preventative officiating is not coaching; the goal is to encourage compliance with the rules and to facilitate the game, not to assist one team.
Here are some examples of preventative officiating:
- Diligently look for illegal equipment during the pregame warmups. If your state wants you to strictly enforce the pant length rule, tell players to pull their pants over their knees in warmups. If a player has a dangling mouthpiece, check to see if he also has one in his mouth. By rule, he can only equip one mouthpiece. Look for play cards on the waist.
- Before you officiate a varsity game, try to find video of the team in Hudl or MaxPreps. MaxPreps will provide team and individual statistics. You’ll be able to identify key players and offensive tendencies.
- Observe formations and plays during warmups. If you familiarize yourself with the plays teams run out of certain formations, you’ll better be able to anticipate player movement during the game. Look for quarterback arm strength and kicker leg strength.
- If you are on Team K’s restraining line for a free kick, ensure Team K has players in formation and wait until the clock is correctly set before you hand the ball to the kicker.
- If a player’s actions are close to a foul, speak with the player and communicate what you want to see or what “right looks like.” Don’t threaten a player with a flag. For example, instead of saying, “If you do that again, I’ll flag you,” say, “Keep your hands inside your torso.” Instead of saying, “Knock it off!” say, “Way to play football guys. Let’s have good sportsmanship. Back to your huddles.”
- Anticipate when the coach will call a timeout and listen for his voice when a play ends. Let the coach know he can move outside the coach’s box to request a timeout if the ball is snapped outside the 25-yard lines.
- Look for a kicking tee coming onto the field on fourth down and communicate the pending scrimmage kick formation to the entire crew. Don’t let a field goal attempt take the crew by surprise.
- If multiple coaches or more than 11 players are walking onto the field to join the players between the 9-yard marks during a timeout, politely remind them only one coach and no more than 11 players can be at the huddle.
- Wings should inform the coaches of remaining timeouts, especially when time is running out in a quarter. All crew members should be aware of remaining timeouts.
- Referees, ensure the crew is set and the defense is set before blowing the ready for play following a timeout, to begin a new series, and following penalty enforcement. If a player must leave the field because his helmet came completely off during the previous play, or if a player must leave because of blood, ensure the coach has replaced the player before blowing the RFP.
- In sub-varsity games, hold the RFP if a team is having trouble getting 11 players on the field. If the team on offense is getting blown out late in the game, hold the RFP until the team breaks the huddle.
- Referees, if limited time remains on the game clock and you will start the clock on the RFP following an official’s timeout (injury, penalty enforcement, measurement, etc), let the offensive team’s coach know you’ll start the game clock on the wind.
Quiz
Read the quiz stem and then choose the best answer(s). (Choose all that apply.)
4/10 at the R-26. R44 partially blocks K77’s field goal attempt in the neutral zone and the ball bounces to the R-5. R56 attempts to recover the ball and muffs it into R’s end zone where K42 falls on it. Before R56’s muff, R72 blocks K53 below the waist at the R-10.
- Touchdown
- Touchback
- 1/10 for Team K at the R-13
- 1/10 for Team R at the R-5
- 1/10 for Team R at the R-10
Review Rules 2-16-2h, 6-2-6, 8-5-3a(1), and 10-4-3