Becoming a Prepared Football Official

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...

For those officials out there eager to learn things beyond just the rule book, blogs are a great place to look. My recommendation to you is to go to football zebras blog. Once there search for the post called “Calm Signals: the sign of under-control officiating.” This post does a great job of explaining how we as officials communicate and show we belong in the stripes on the field with the signals we give. No matter if it is an incomplete pass, fumble recovery, or penalty enforcement, we as officials must also know our signals are being watched and reflect on us. As the post points out, there are some plays that are very exciting, to the point everyone is on their feet cheering. However, the official has to have composure and take the whole play in. They can’t look excited for a team and they must show through there signals that they have been there before and are a professional. However, like the post by football zebras accurately mentions, sometimes a big signal is necessary...