MCFOA Newsletter, Volume 1, Number 4, May 23, 2005       

We’re back with the 4th edition of MCFOA’s Newsletter. This edition covers all sorts of preventable problems that we nevertheless seem to encounter from year to year. As it turns out, most of these problems don’t even involve the football team directly.

On a year to year basis, the most prevalent problems we have at any game site involve activities that are ancillary to the game, but are not part of the game itself.

When the officiating crew first appears to take charge of the pre-game period 30 minutes prior to scheduled kick-off, one of the members of the crew, the Line Judge, is responsible for making contact with “game management” to get squared away on all the pre-game and planned halftime activities. Although it isn’t required, we really appreciate it when the home school anticipates this meeting with the Line Judge and makes responsible people available for this meeting. Typically, we’d like to be able to speak with whoever is responsible for the field preparation and markings, the band director and/or a school administrator. Our meeting with these folks can and should be quite brief unless we find problems with field preparation or the schedule of non-game events. In those rare cases, more time will be necessary to work through the problems.

One of the most frequent conflicts to arise is between the playing of the National Anthem and the coin toss ceremony. We typically begin to walk ourselves and the captains from the end zone 5 minutes prior to the scheduled kick-off. If we have a typical 7:30 PM kick-off scheduled, we’ll start to walk at 7:25 PM. Before we start to walk, the band should have already cleared the field following the playing of the National Anthem. We’ve found that if we can get the band to start playing the Star Spangled Banner in time for it to END not later than 7:21 PM, we have the least number of conflicts to start the game. That gives the band a full 4 minutes to get out of the way of the start of the coin-toss activities. If you can get your band director to schedule his pre-game entertainment and ceremonies around getting off the field before we start the walk, there should be no real reason why we can’t kick-off right on schedule.

Another frequently misunderstood aspect of the game is the management of half-time. There are two major time frames involved at the half. Half-time, per se, is a 20-minute period that begins when the Referee signals the ECO that the field is clear. This happens just as the officiating crew is stepping off the field. The entire half-time show, including one or both bands and any other activity is supposed to come on and then clear the field in this 20-minute period. Our biggest single set of problems with administering time periods historically happens with Homecoming ceremonies which are most often conducted at half-time. Generally, a curtailed band performance is needed in order to pull this off without setting up the home team for a delay-of-game penalty to start the second half. Close coordination between the Homecoming event planners and your staff can go a long way toward making Homecoming a fun and non-penalty-inducing experience for all those involved. The second time frame is the mandatory 3-minute “warm-up” period that immediately follows the 20 minutes allowed for the bands and other ceremonies. This 3-minute period may be used by the teams however they choose. The intent of the period is to actually warm-up the teams for the 2nd half kick-off. Whether or not either or both teams avail themselves of this 3-minute warm-up period, the officiating crew will enforce the timing of this 3-minute period on the game clock prior to allowing the 2nd half kick-off to be made.

We are often asked about the administration of time-outs during the game. A charged time-out lasts for exactly one minute from the time the time-out is called until the ball is marked ready for play again unless both teams are ready to play sooner than his and ask for the ball to be marked ready for play accordingly. The time-out is followed by up to 25 seconds before the ensuing snap or kick must take place just as in any normal ball-ready-for-play situation. The timing of the time-outs is done by the Back Judge. When 45 seconds of the time-out have expired, he’ll let the Referee know and each team will be given a “15 seconds to ready” warning. You have two different kinds of visit you may conduct with your team during a time-out. The first, most restricted, kind is out on the field away from the sideline. In that kind of meeting, 1 coach and up to 3 non-coaching attendants (such as water boys) may meet with up to 11 players. The second, least restricted, kind is within 5 yards of the sideline in the area of your team box. In that kind of meeting any number of coaches and any number of players and substitutes may participate. In either type of meeting no players are allowed to speak directly with any coaches who are not part of the on-field meeting (no headsets on players).