Activist Referee Crew

[757FridayNiteZ]

Each year there appears to be a Football Referee Crew which appears to insert themselves into the game in an obvious manner here in the SouthEastern District. The number of penalties vs other games is typically twice that are experienced in other games. An example of what I would call an activist lean is the following:

During the recent Oscar Smith vs Great Bridge game, I noticed the Referee & Umpire unilaterally conferring with each other during a dead ball pause in the game & sprinting back to their positions before the snap. Immediately upon the ball snap, they called an off sides penalty, and called another upon the snap after that penalty. The quarterback, frustrated looked to ask if the call was based on his call for the ball in the shotgun formation. Apparently, the referee did not tell anyone what the problem was until the 3rd penalty was called & the coach asked for a time out & ran out onto the field to inquire as the what the infraction was. Initially, the referee appeared to shoo the coach away but the Umpire & referee finally spoke to the coach. Apparently, there was an illegal snap issue which the coach spoke to the players about & the problem never occurred again.

The question IS, doesn't the crew have SOME obligation to speak to a player or coach BEFORE this issue got to that point?

Also, are there grading of the officials to prevent such activists from being allowed to officiate games during the playoffs? I am pretty sure they missed a big call during a blocked kick which didn't appear to cross the line of scrimmage & whistled the ball dead pretty much while it was still in the air! The outcome of the game did not change BUT during the playoffs, such a call definitely is more likely to change the outcome of that game!

 

[White hat]

I can't say much about this because it's full of suppositions, assumptions and guesses about what was being said or what was going on.

Would I communicate with a team or coach if there was a problem? Yep.

Sometimes it works. Sometimes the players arent interested, so an official moves to the next step and starts flagging things that were being let go with a warning.

Do you know that this crew didnt do exactly that? Maybe during the time out the R and U said they both warned a team/player/coach about something and nothing changed, so they were going to have to flag it. Sure enough, they did. The coach then says "What is going on?" and the R says "Don't come asking about it now, we told you 15 minutes ago."

I have no idea if that happened, but I've been involved in that scenario a few times, so I can see it happening. It's a lot more likely than thinking two guys were idly chatting during a time out and decided "Hey, you know what would be fun? Lets just start throwing flags over and over. That's always a good time."

Each association has it's own evaluation process. I'm not entirely sure what my own commissioner does for evaluations so I can't even guess what happens in a place where I don't work.

 

[757FridayNiteZ]

No supposition implied, I am flat out saying that officiating crew is the outlier in how they manage a game. The amount of calls made disrupts the game. This is not an opinion or assumption that they collude to affect the outcome, but I do think they do have undue influence in the game.

Smith's center might be moving the ball too much getting set before the hike. While the crew last night missed some obvious calls (which happens & is to be expected), the way they handled the center last night was totally different. The ref simply blew the whistle ran up & appeared to tell the center to replace the ball in its original position. Should it have been a penalty? It likely was, but the refs simply handled it differently and communicated clearly.

As mentioned above, with same earlier issue, the refs didn't explain the infraction until Bill Dee called a time out just to speak to them about it.

That's why I chose the title of the post as I did.