A Game Gone to Hell

I recently worked a game with a guy who was one of these black-and-white, stuck in the mud, tunnel vision neophyte pricks who whined all game "why can't every one just follow the NFHS mechanics". Why? Because some of us actually understand that the game is not about rules and procedures. You need to be able to adapt or you have no place in this game.

Football is a simple game -- 11 people on one team have four chances to move this funny shaped ball 30 feet while 11 other people try like hell to prevent this from happening. If the first team meets that objective, they try like hell to keep moving the ball until they put the ball in the second teams end zone. This happens, back and forth, for 48 minutes. Then we all go get pizza afterwards.

Look, our job as officials is to make the game safe and fair... in that order. That's it. We are not there to enforce the rules. We use rules to ensure the game is safe and fair. Some people just don't get it.

And we use mechanics to ensure we are the game runs smooth and we are in the ideal place to make a 'no call'. We do not use mechanics to ensure we can make good calls. More importantly, we want to avoid making bad calls. Bill Leavy, an NFL official of some note, recently spoke at one of our association meetings. When asked about Super Bowl XL and many of the controversial calls, even he stated stated if you are going to err, err on the side of a no call, but be sure you are in the position to not make it.

Now, one of the cardinal rules of officiating a football game is you do what the White Hat says. The NFHS mechanics be damned. If he wants a specific procedure to be followed during a given situation, then you do it that way. End of story. If you hang on to principle and 'the book says' bullshit, then the game will go to hell in a hurry.

And that is exactly what happened.