The months of preparation, study, and impatience finally culminated this weekend into a four game block of contests. Unexpectedly, the games were actually pretty good for week zero and none of them were lopsided. I'll cover the HS games in this post, and include a separate post for the college game.
By the way, week zero means the regular season begins next week. The games I worked count as part of the team's overall ten game regular season team record. These same teams will have a BYE sometime during the remaining ten weeks. Stated another way, the teams which did not play Friday night already had their BYE and will play for ten straight weeks. So, the season is eleven weeks long, but the teams all play a ten game season. So why is it called week zero? I just explained it, don't you get it?
Freshman
For one official this was his first high school game. When I asked him if he was nervous he stated, "no, I did two pop warner games last week" Through a sagacious grin I said, "that's good".
Prior to the game, one of the coaches said his son would be the ball boy. The young man was around ten years old I suppose and seemed eager to please. We instructed him to stay with the Line Judge(LJ), follow him around, do what he says, etc. He respectfully said he would. Typically, the home team provids the ball boy and the LJ typically works the home team sideline. The chains are on the opposite side of the field - away from the press box so the announcer can see the down and distance.
This was twenty minutes before game time when I still only had three officials. I was getting pissed and anxious. When the forth official finally arrived, I decided to move him to LJ and the new guy to Head Linesman. (If you are going to be using four-man mechanics, then you want the stronger official on LJ). I forgot to tell the ball boy he now had a new official to follow.
Then, as we were doing the coin toss, the fifth guy shows-up. I'm getting more pissed. I've never worked this guy before, so I moved him to LJ and the fourth guy to Back Judge.
During the first five change of possessions my glorious crew cannot seem to get the right ball on the field. I have to kill the clock, bring the new ball in, slow the game down. We looks like idiots. Now I'm just annoyed as hell.
During a time-out the coach (father of the ball boy) tells me his son is on the other side of the field following the original line judge... just as we instructed. Ooops. I went over-the-top to thank the young man for listening so carefully to our instructions. And promptly told the LJ what a jack-off he was for letting this fiasco go one for half the quarter.
Insert -- voice-over exhale.
One of the new rules came into play - Horse Collar Tackle. The new guy threw two flags on a single play. One was a block in the back and the other was the horse collar. How a new guy can see this, let alone on the same play, is beyond me, but I'll leave that alone. Ok, these two live ball fouls will cancel and we'll replay the down. Then the Back Judge tells me that was not a horse collar. I defer to the BJ and waive off the horse collar. Why? The BJ reported that although one player did have his hands on the inside of the shoulder pads, there were two players tackling him.
Here is the rule:
No player shall: grab the inside back or side collar of the shoulder pads or jersey of the runner and subsequently pull the runner to the ground.
So it is a foul when a single tackler using this technique to pull the runner to the ground. Once you have more than one tackler, then there will be no foul. This was also the interpretation from the 2009 Rules Interpetation Meeting I atteneded.
The game ended 33-22, which is high scoring for Freshman. It could have been 33-29 if one of the players for the visitors was not being stupid and blind sided a guy thirty yards away from the ball. I called back the TD with this flag.
When I asked the new guy how he felt after his first high school game he said, "it's a lot faster than pop warner. And this isn't even varsity!" I promptly resumed my sagacious grin.
This was a longer post that I expected. I'll post the Varsity notes separately.
