Officiating - growing the game

Improving the relations between coaches and officials is a great topic coach, and you've taken the first step just by raising it as something that we can & should work on.

I can only speak for FL, but my understanding is that many of the non-NCAA states work similarly. The FHSAA is the overall governing body and agrees on how the officials should interpret and administer the rules. The state also assigns crews to playoff games from Round 1 through the Finals. They review all reported incidents that led to a player or coach disqualification and determine the length of the suspension, if any. They also establish our game fees. I could be missing one or two things, but basically that's it for the state involvement.

The day-to-day or week-to-week management of officiating is done at the local association level. In FL, I believe there are 20-something different associations, all sanctioned by the state but all run by a local slate of elected officers - President, VP, Treasurer, etc. In addition, there is a very important elected position called Booking Commissioner, and that person is (theoretically) in charge of assigning games. More on that in a bit. There is also a local "rules interpreter" who is responsible for contacting the state with any questions related to rules or enforcement. One of the reasons for that is to prevent the FHSAA from having to field questions from any of 2,500 individual officials.

Games are assigned in different ways by different associations. In some associations, the booking commissioner selects 5 (FL is 5 man mechanics until the playoffs)individual officials and assigns them to their respective positions and they are a "crew" for that game. In others, there are a number of crews who work with each other every week. If the number of games that week is greater than the number of permanent crews, those games are filled by a crew made up of "pool officials" - guys who are not part of a permanent crew. Still others may have a draft, where the crews select the games that they would like to work and unless there is a very good reason not to, the booking commissioner assigns the crews according to the results of the draft. There are pros and cons to all of those options. I am a huge proponent of permanent crews. The officials are a team, and like any team the more reps they get together, the better they will operate. But that's just my opinion.

Most associations have a process in place that allows for the officials to be rated or ranked. In our association, any official can work Umpire, HL, LJ, or BJ, but only those who have progressed to a certain level can work the Referee position. JV games can be used as training opportunities for officials to work as the R before they may have met all of the requirements for varsity games. Most associations also have some kind of evaluation system to rank officials / crews for playoff assignments. At the end of the year, associations will provide a list of crews from 1 to X and the FHSAA will assign games accordingly. As the playoffs progress, there will likely be only #1 crews working regional finals, state semifinals, and state finals.

I won't go into the details of how the crew evaluation and ranking process works other than to say it's not a simple, easy, or pleasant process. In addition to evaluations, things like attendance at meetings, score on the annual test, seniority, and other factors may be considered. I'm aware of some states that take input from coaches and there are pros and cons associated with that as well. You might remember some years ago the griping and complaining by NFL officials after the R was announced for the Super Bowl. All I can say is that if it's political, emotional, and difficult at the NFL level, you can imagine what it's like at the HS level.

The way oversimplified answer to how do we make the relationships between coaches and officials better is this: Communicate. If your local association has meetings, I'm sure they'd appreciate seeing coaches there. What a great time for Q&A about rules interpretations and for you to potentially highlight inconsistencies. For example, if you were to say "last week I walked a couple of yards on to the field to call the offensive plays and this week they told me I couldn't do that" or "we've been in our same punt formation all year and last week it was flagged for not enough players on the LoS" or whatever - the whole association gets to hear your point of view and has a better chance of developing some consistency in the way they call games. Your association probably also has a rules clinic in the spring. They'd welcome you to attend that as well. I've never had a bad interaction with a coach at a clinic or at an association meeting (we've had a handful of coaches attend over my 17 years) or even in a pregame conference. We seem to be able to get along with each other just fine in all of those instances. But football is an emotional game and emotions run high after the whistle blows. Did you see the Bills coach on the sideline during their game with the Pats last night? (MNF 12/6/21). I don't think any of us want that, but it happens.

Some states have rules that prevent any coach, other than the HC, from speaking to officials during the game. That seems a bit extreme but I wonder if it's helpful?
I've trained new classes of officials in the past and always emphasized that this isn't baseball and if you're arguing with a coach, it's YOUR fault. I've also suggested that if a coach asks a question, we do our best to answer it. If a coach makes a statement, there's no need to respond. "Does that foul include loss of down?" needs an answer, but "Number 64 is holding on every play" doesn't. Would it be helpful for associations to share things like that with the coaches?

One of the biggest issues we all have, all states, all sports, is a lack of officials. The old guys (like me) are getting older every year and the number of new officials is less than the number who retire every year. Establishing better relationships between coaches and officials isn't going to solve the problem, but it surely won't make it worse.

I hope this was helpful Coach. I suspect the president and members of your local association would be very eager to have a conversation like this with you and your colleagues.

Good luck Coach, and I hope you're able to make progress. I think seniority can be both good and bad as a criteria for ranking. It is pretty likely that officials who have been around for 5-10 years are better than those who have been around for 2-3 years. One the other hand, it's not necessarily true that officials who have been around for 20 years are better than those who have been around for 10. Hopefully your proposal can factor those kinds of things into the overall ranking.

Regarding test scores, I believe that most states have adopted on-line testing with open books and no time limits. I'm afraid that doesn't reflect an official's rule knowledge nearly as well as the in-person, closed-book, proctor monitored exams that we used to take.

I know there are some states that include coaches' feedback as part of their evaluation process. I think the challenge would be elevating the coaches' feedback beyond whether or not calls were correct. Would it be possible to rate things like game management (whether the game flowed at an appropriate pace), did the officials maintain appropriate control, and were they able to provide fast and correct responses to questions from you. That makes more sense to me than whether holding or PI calls were correct - that's a no-win argument in many cases. Rules application could be another category. If your crews are not applying the rules correctly, that should weigh heavily in any ranking process.

Might it also be possible to have coaches offer feedback on the positive side rather than negative? For example, could you all identify the 3 best crews that worked your games rather than rating or ranking every crew that you see? I can see how that information could work it's way into the overall crew ranking and playoff assignment process. This might be a lot easier if your association used a permanent crew concept. I don't know how practical it would be for coaches to do this position-by-position.

one of the points we would like to make is that the coaches/HC has to grade the crew/officials on a 1-10 grade scale.  And the grade had to reflect the 'why' a grade was given; on top to make it more responsive if a crew got a grade < 7 there had to be an explanation to the WHY, otherwise the grade reverted back to 7.

You point on coach's feedback to be more than just individual calls... but more on the mechanics of the game.... great stuff

Again THANKS so much on the input, it's great to get the often overlooked 3rd prong of a great game; officials.  Thanks for your service in our great game of football.