Minor League Football 2009 Clinic

This Saturday, I'll work my first Minor League Football game for the 2009 season. There are high expectations for the league and I intend to do my part to make good things happen. For those who were following along last season, you will recall I worked three separate Semi-pro leagues. Each used College rules with some slight variations between them (some used down-by-contact and others didn't. Don't ask me which one used which rules.) Two of the leagues are now defunct and the NCFL has taken their place.

The NCFL (Northern California Football League) league is going to use NFL rules. More or less.

As I mentioned, the Semi-Pro games (we now use the term Minor League) used College rules with a few High School rules thrown in for safety. Now, we are using NFL rules with some College rules thrown in - I assume for simplicity.

The good news - The NFL rules are closer to College rules, than High School are to College. The bad news - many of the officials I will be working with have never worked a College game. And we did not get the rules we will using until last Saturday. This will be interesting.

Here are some of the non-College things we will have to remember:

• Offensive Pass Interference is only 10 yards, instead of 15 yards
• Defensive Pass Interference is a spot foul. No yardage penalty.
• College Chop-Block rule (meaning, not allowed)
• College block below he waist rules (they will regret allowing this one)
  
• Don't kill the clock on a 1st down
• The defense cannot score on a Try (extra point)
• Two feet in-bounds, not one
• Only the outside gunners can leave until the ball is kicked
• Overtime will be like College
  

But one of the best rules is if a player is ejected for throwing a punch, he is gone for the entire season. I'm loving this.

During the clinic we had a representative from the NFL give a presentation and the NCFL commissioner has some big ideas for the league. More on this next post.