Becoming a Prepared Football Official

If you are a new reader to Prepared Football Official’s blog, first welcome! I am glad you are here. Please take some time to read the About Me which can be found here and the Purpose page found here . You have also missed some early blog posts I posted. One of my favorite early blog posts was, “Why You Should Make the Leap and Start Officiating Football.” This post talks about many of the benefits that can come from you deciding to become an official. Some of the benefits range from communication and composure skills to test taking and teamwork. All things that can help you in all aspects of life. Take a look at this blog here . Another important early post was about one of the most important steps when becoming a football official, joining an area association. Being around other officials will not only help you learn the rules faster and better, but it will also help you get to know fellow officials so you can get some game assignments. Crews are eager to get some new blood out o...

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 p...

For current officials, armchair officials and people who just like to keep up on the happenings of officiating, especially at the NFL level, Football Zebras is a very informational blog site. The site has tons of different areas to explore such as rules school, film study, rules and mechanics. The rules school does a great job of showing NFL rules in a fun interactive quiz way. Questions usually get posted after controversial calls on a Sunday game and it helps bring clarity for why the call was or was not made. No matter what level of official you are, it is a great way to test your rules knowledge. The film study section within Football Zebras is a great way for people to visually learn the rules. Everyone who officiates, especially football, knows the importance of watching film. You can read a rule in a rule book 100 times, and yet when you see it out on the field you may not remember those words from the rule book. Watching a video lets you process it as if you just saw t...

Deciding if you want to take the leap to officiate football and getting started in officiating can be the hardest part. When many people are deciding if they want to officiate, they think about the pressure they will be under, the people yelling at them, being busy and traveling on Fridays and Saturdays and if they can know the rules well enough to do a good job. But what people don’t think about is the good that can come from officiating. I am here to help show you the positives of officiating and help encourage you to take the leap and decide to officiate football, or decide it is something you are going to continue if you are already starting. Besides the fact that for the amount of time you actually work a game you get paid very well, there are many other benefits. Being an official will undoubtedly help you develop many skills such as communication, composure, test taking skills, teamwork and keep you in shape! Knowing that you will have to be keeping up with very fast studen...