Pre-game. For starters you should receive a note from our association no later than early in the week of a varsity game. In this note will be an acknowledgement of our understanding of the game date, time and place. We will have a crew at your site no later than 1 hour and 30 minutes before scheduled kick-off, barring unexpected difficulties with making the trip there. Also in this note will be the roster of officials assigned to this game. These will be listed by position and include all six on-field positions and the electric clock operator. If you find any problem with this note, especially errors in the game date, time or place, we want to hear from you as soon as possible. We’re going to be where we’ve said we’d be, and no place else, unless we hear from you otherwise. So, it is very important that you check this note when you get it and let us know promptly of anything that is wrong with it. Similarly, if you do not receive a note from us by Tuesday (for a Friday night HOME game), you should get in touch with us. While it could just be a simple administrative or mail-delay problem, chances are if you haven’t received our note, we do not have a crew scheduled for your game. Obviously, this would be a major problem for everyone involved. We need to know about this immediately. Please don’t just assume all will be OK if you don’t get our letter. Regardless of how this might have happened, we’ll all wish we had done better if there is no crew assigned to one of your home games!

In-game. While our primary focus is on what happens on the field of play, you know that we take very seriously our duty to keep both sidelines informed of what is happening, especially in the administration of penalties. We will make every effort to get you team, player and infraction type for every penalty called. We’ll do this as quickly as we can. We will also try, if possible, to let you know what will be the result of penalty acceptance or declination if you have the option. However, we expect you to also know the rules and their impact. Your decisions must be made upon your own knowledge, and not our preliminary communications to you verbally. This is especially true in the rare cases where there has been a loose ball and change of possession coupled with one or more penalties occurring during the live ball period. In that case there are many dependencies as to which team has an option, which team will have final possession of the ball and at what spot on the field. It will typically take a while for us to sort this out on the field. We’ll let you know as soon as we can how all this can go. Meanwhile, watch the Referee for his preliminary signals of the various penalties as he makes them to the press box.

There are lots of other situations where communications is important. We will come to both sidelines to explain any adjustments we make to the game clock, for example. In cases where you desire to communicate with the Referee, you have a choice of relaying a verbal request through the officials working your sideline or calling a time-out for a conference. In the case of a conference to challenge a rule application (before the next snap), if we agree with you that we’ve misapplied a rule, the time-out will revert to an official’s time-out. Otherwise, it is a charged time-out to your team. If you only want to get information, not challenge a rule, the obvious best choice is to relay through the officials on your sideline. We will respond as quickly as the flow of the game allows to any such request for information.

Post-game. Immediately after the end of the contest, the entire crew will vacate the field. Typically, we will all leave the game site immediately, as well, though some sites do afford us the opportunity to take a shower and change clothes, first. In any event, other than to bid a quick “goodbye” to other nearby participants, none of the crew will remain on the field or in the press box. We’ll not stop on the field or at the stadium to discuss any aspect of the game just completed with anyone. This doesn’t end your opportunity to communicate with the association about the game, though. We actively maintain an association web site at www.mcoafootball.org. On this site there is an “Evaluate a Crew” link as well as a “Board / Key People” link. If you wish to evaluate your game crew or an individual official on that crew, we highly encourage you to use the evaluation link. And if you want to call or exchange e-mail with any of our board or key members, you’ll find all their contact information on the board link. We want to hear from you. We especially want to hear about anything exceptional, either good or bad from your point of view. We want to reward crews for exceptionally good performances and we need to get to the bottom of any that might not meet our standards. Your willingness to enter crew evaluations and/or to call us is key to our being able to do this important type of follow-up. Please avail yourselves of this capability that having MCFOA as your assigned association makes possible for you.