Equipment- Part 2

No matter if you are starting to officiate high school or college football, almost everyone has questions about what equipment they need. In this part two blog, we will cover bean bags, flags and game cards. I will try to give you the basics and point you in the right direction of where to get it. Like always, if you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to let me know here.

When it comes to bean bags, what color you need depends on the level of football you are officiating. If you are going to be officiating football at the high school level, you need blue bean bags. If you will be officiating college, you need black bean bags. Bean bags can be skinny and long or just one big pouch of beans. Which type you get is completely up to the official. For every game, you should have two bean bags on you, especially if you are a back judge.

For flags, high school officials use all yellow flags while college officials have the ball of their flag black. You can buy them like that, tape them, or color with something like a sharpie. Officials need to have a penalty card for each game. You can also buy or make these on the computer. Things you should be able to put on the card are coach’s names, teams, timeouts taken by each team, penalties and who committed the foul and what time of the game, the score and finally there should be room to keep track of things such as injuries and helmets coming off.  

The final two accessories that you need is a down counter and chain clip. The down counter is a black wrist band with a string to go around your fingers to indicate the down. Some officials use more than one, so it is a good idea to buy a few of these.

Now that I have made it through all the accessories you will need, I am going to hold off on talking about the jersey pants and shoes until next time so I can get into some good detail with them. The actual clothes are usually what people have the most questions on so hopefully me breaking these up will help you. If you would like to start looking at some equipment now that you know all the accessories, Honig’s is a great place to look and order. You can find their website here.