Call to Master 5-Person Football Officiating

Thankfully, football officials’ associations here in Maine have slowly convinced many schools to hire five officials instead of the traditional four that have struggled to cover high school football for generations.  Frankly, four officials do not have enough eyes to enforce the rules as demanded by the NFHS rulebook.

After working many years with four officials, I have learned that when covering the running plays outside the tackles, there are times when dangerous blocks and/or facemask infractions could not be seen properly.   Passing and kicking plays also lack proper coverage in a game covered by four field officials.  Having worked several games on a 5-person crew, I now know that by studying five-person crew mechanics, discussing coverages in our meetings, and spending additional time in our pre-game conferences, we can begin to truly reap the benefits of having a sufficient number of officials to cover the game of football.

The Texas Association of Sports Officials–Football Division publishes an officials’ manual for a crew of five.  This document is very detailed (69 pages) and is revised annually.  I believe that this can be a very valuable resource for all officials who work on five-person crews.  Somehow I located a copy of this document online when looking for quality resources to share with fellow football officials here in this blog.  I will seek permission to share this manual here in the blog.

In the meantime, I hope our group here in Eastern Maine can refer to this one copy occasionally and slowly learn to cover situations as well as they do in Texas.  I believe that Texas high schools usee NCAA rules for their high school football (yes, everything is bigger in Texas, especially their football when compared to Maine).   Therefore, with rule difference we cannot follow instructions tied to the rules.  However, their directions on how to cover formations, various scrimmage plays, the kicking game, and special situations might be very helpful.

There is a reason that many officials from Texas move from high school to college and professional leagues (NFL, Arena Football, Canadian Football).  With a group putting this much work into its officials’ manual, you know they care very much about doing a quality job.  Let’s make an effort to learn from our officiating friends in Texas.  I suggest that a few of us find time to sit over the next few weeks to see what we can effectively teach as we work to improve our coverage of games assigned to 5-man crews.