Big 12 to Experiment with 8 Officials Next Season

[russ]

The 8th Official would be in the backfield where the NFL Umpires line up. To be honest, I don't see what this would accomplish. Maybe you would be able to catch more holding calls but other than that I don't know. I would actually like to see College Umpires moved to the backfield as it seems safer and you would be able to catch more holding calls, but having an Official in the backfield and the second level of the defense makes very little sense to me.



www.al.com/sports/index.ssf/2013/02/big_12_plans_to_experiment_wit.html#incart_flyout_sports

[FredFan7]

Boy, I'm surprised. When I saw the thread title, I thought they'd put him in the secondary.

Interesting comments by Walt Anderson that the deep judge experiment in the NFL sounded like a flop.

[FredFan7]

Referee Magazine interviewed Anderson about this subject:

Referee: Is the eighth official more analogous to what the NFL is doing by having the umpire in the offensive backfield?

Anderson: Yes. I think with the exception that he’s going to be looking at different keys than what NFL’s. One of the things that’s important for us is to try to keep changes in keys at a minimum. That was why one of the things that we’re going to be doing is to not change any more of the other officials’ mechanics than what is necessary. We’re not changing at all what the umpire is going to be looking at. There are a lot of situations in which, with seven-official mechanics, the referee and the umpire sometimes have to think, “I’m now going to need to try not only to look at the players that I’m primarily responsible for, I’ve got to go help out with other players that I’m not normally used to looking at just because we know that there’s nobody over there looking at them.’ So really the eighth official is to fill the void in coverages rather than trying to re-identify a key. Even in the NFL, whenever they flip the umpire back and forth (in relation to sides of the ball), it sometimes ends up requiring them to do different things when they’re on one side of the line of scrimmage and other things when they’re on the other, and we want to try to avoid that.

Referee: How about on free kicks?

Anderson: Probably the alternate referee will be going to be out there in the middle (of the field). You might remember several years ago we used to have an official out in the middle, and then we didn’t have somebody on one sideline. We’ll talk a little bit more about it with the officials. Even though the back judge may still give the ball to the kicker and run off the field, we may look at having the alternate referee do that since he’s going to be out there. Then he’ll stand behind the kicker. That will also help even before the kick with situations of illegal formations, the requirement of having four on each side of the kicker. Once the ball is kicked he will be the person responsible for protecting the kicker with the current rules that the kicker is afforded in terms of not being able to hit him for a certain amount of time. He’ll be in the position to do that.

Referee: On punts the alternate referee would be able to help with leaping the shield.

Anderson: Yes, absolutely. He’ll be able to help whenever players are blocked and the force of the block then causes them to make contact. Again, with front coverage and so many of the other officials working downfield, you often end up with quite a few line-of-scrimmage players in the back that either one or two officials are having to cover. This will provide another set of eyes back there where we’ve been absent that in the past.

Referee: Do you have enough officials available to handle the staffing?

Anderson: That was one of the things we actually talked about with the coordinators. I think for any program that’s able to sort of absorb this initially, it would be us because of our CFO West structure with both the Mountain West and the Southland. We’ve got so many officials now that are part of our group that we can pull from and rely to fill all of our scheduling needs, it’s really not going to be an issue for us.

Referee: How will you define success of the experiment?

Anderson: There’s probably three main areas that we’re really going to assess. One of is going to be player safety. With the emphasis on targeting and other things we felt the eighth official is going to provide better coverage in general. The second is going to be the areas where we’ve had traditional voids in coverage that I’ve already mentioned. Are we filling those gaps where we’ve had loopholes that because of the dynamics of the game? Because of how it has evolved the last 10 to 15 years, mechanics for seven officials has really just not been able to fully keep up with that. From that standpoint, do we feel like we’ve been able to cover the deficiencies that exist with the development of the college game? The third part is the pace of the game. One of the areas that the eighth official is going to be specifically charged is helping to administer dead-ball activity relative to the spotting of the ball and getting the ball ready for play when one play is over and we’re waiting on the next. That is going to include spotting the ball and taking care of administrative things that the referee and the umpire are often now preoccupied with that don’t allow them to be in position to adequately officiate the next play, particularly in hurry-up situations. With the administration of the game, we feel like the eighth official is going to help much more efficiently allow the officiating crew to administer the game, and allow other officials to be ready to officiate whenever you get some of these hurry-up situations that are certainly more common in the college game today. If we feel we’ve taken away from anything, we certainly want to take a look at that. Once we assess that, we’ll be coming back next January with a report for both the rules committee and the coordinators on what we found. Here are the pros, here are the cons. Is it something that’s worth additional experimentation or expanded experimentation with possibly then other conferences getting involved?

Referee: Could you foresee a ninth official, another deep official back with the back judge?

Anderson: I’m not ever going to say never, but I think you do get to a point where there is a specific number above which are you really achieving what it ends up costing you, both in manpower and in the ability to just be efficient in terms of moving around on the football field. It’s like so many things, when is enough enough. I think there is a number. If you had 22, you could have one set of eyes on every player. I think that would be way too many. And it could be that 11 might be too many. I think a lot of it just depends upon how the game is played, how the game evolves. One of the things that I think officiating always should do is be prepared to adapt to the game. It’s not just how the game evolves, but as the game evolves it should be able to adapt to that game. I think that’s what we’re seeing now, especially I think in the college game. It’s so wide open and so exciting, but with that excitement brings its own set of circumstances that you do have to deal with. That’s why I say from the standpoint of player safety, gaps in coverage, and administration of the pace of the game, those three specific areas are areas where we feel the eighth official has a lot of potential and a lot of merit. That’s why we strongly feel like it’s something that’s worth exploring.

[intheknow]

8 officials was unanimously approved by the Big 12 AD's yesterday. Press release expected by end of the week.

[FredFan7]

Thanks for the info ITK!

If we read into Walt Anderson's interview comments, it looks like the 8th official will be known as the "Alternate Referee."