How to Best Take the Football Rules Quizzes and Tests

Taking football officiating quizzes and tests can be one of the hardest parts of the whole season for many officials. I personally find the tests to be the hardest. But why are they so hard and what are some tips to help you through them? Let me try and help you out with that question.

To start, many great officials struggle on tests. In my experience, tests do show how well you know the rules, but doesn’t always quite correlate to the type of official you are on the field. Reading a question and seeing something on the field are two very different things. Additionally making test hard is the fact that on tests, things happen that honestly never happen in a game. But they help you think through complex chains of events.

Therefore, to help you get through the test successfully, sit down with your rule book and case book and work through each question slowly. Picture the play happening in your head and everything you are dealing with. Go to the rule book and case book and read up on the area or rule. If you find things that make you answer the question a certain way, right down the page number or rule reference. Doing this will help you if you have a conversation with other officials. You can talk through the problems and be able to quickly reference the rule book to why you answered it the way you did. If you go through one question at a time reading up on each rule, you most likely will come away feeling more comfortable with the rules.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

About me blog

My name is Bill and I am a senior in College. I have been officiating football now for 6 years. In those six years, I have officiated pee-wee, JV high school, varsity high school, JV College, and varsity college football. Beyond my personal experience of officiating, my dad has also been an official for much longer than I have been alive. As a kid growing up, I would always watch my dad's football games on TV and talk to him after the game. My dad has taught me more things about officiating than I may have learned in a whole career of officiating football. However, many new officials do not have the experience of growing up around officiating.  Being a current football official who started very young, I understand first-hand what it can be like to start something new that you have never done before. Especially as an official where you have many eyes constantly watching and waiting for you to make a mistake. I have seen many young officials get scared off from pursuing officia
Read more

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 th
Read more

Keep the Sidelines Clear!

Something that you won’t learn from a rule book is the importance of keeping coaches and players off “the white.” The white is the sideline and it should be about 2-3 yards deep. During the play, no player, coach, or chain crew should be in the white. Some officiating crews and chain crews like to keep the chains in the white…. DON’T! I have seen too many players and officials hit the chain sticks and get hurt. There is no need for them to be that close to the field.  Nothing but the officials should be in the white during a play. If players and coaches are in the white during the play, officials can be running on the sideline at full speed and run into someone, having the potential to hurt both people. When Football officials are running, they rarely have the luxury to be watching where they are going. If they did, they may miss something. Also, when coaches and players are in the white, it makes it that much easier for them to affect the play while they should not be. Maybe a playe
Read more