Being a college football official is hard. I tried it at the South Carolina spring game

George Schroeder | USA TODAY

Show Caption Hide Caption Reporter tries his hand as football referee USA TODAY Sports' George Schroeder hit the field as an official during a South Carolina spring game. He now has a new respect for the job.

COLUMBIA, S.C. — The pass is on target. The catch is clean. The receiver is running free – and right at me.

These were some of the thoughts that raced through my mind last Saturday afternoon, as A.J. Turner headed toward the end zone. Here was another:

RUN!

I’d been backpedaling, trying to maintain the proper distance and angle. Now it was time to turn and run for the goal line. I got there — and somehow drifted a couple of steps past, into the end zone — just before Turner arrived. But I threw my arms up: Touchdown.

And there was the highlight of my afternoon as a back judge.

Actually, that’s not quite right. The entire weekend, participating on a guest officiating crew for the South Carolina spring game, was a highlight — if you like your weekends super-intense and sometimes overwhelming, with calamity always just around the corner.

“And that,” said Steve Shaw, the SEC’s coordinator of officials, “was at half-speed.”

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It was the second consecutive year the SEC invited media to help officiate a spring game. The goal is to provide a better understanding of the officials’ roles and responsibilities, to experience the physical and mental challenges involved in making calls and to appreciate how much they get right in spite of it all. And it may already have paid dividends for the league.

In September, a side judge mistakenly called Texas A&M quarterback Kellen Mond out of bounds near the 10 on a long run that should have been a touchdown. It was a big error. Inside the SEC’s collaborative instant replay center, there was collective frustration because by rule, the call could not be corrected. But on the broadcast, ESPN analyst Brock Huard said, “It’s human error. They’re not robots.”

It didn’t mitigate the mistake. But a few months earlier, Huard had been part of the officiating crew at Georgia’s spring game; he had experienced firsthand the challenges a football official faces on every play. If the idea in letting reporters and TV analysts become officials for a day was to show how difficult the job is? Mission accomplished.

***

Friday night, we gathered for dinner and a clinic, which was more like a crash course; three hours of Shaw explaining concepts and officials from Matt Austin’s veteran crew providing one-on-one instruction to the media members who would try on their roles the next day. And their uniforms, too.

Black caps. Long-sleeved shirts in those familiar vertical black and white stripes. Black pants with a wide white stripe. Knee-high black tube socks. Turf shoes. A flag, bean bag, down counter and whistle.

So we looked the part — even if we felt more like we were headed for a shift at Foot Locker. When Shaw instructed the real officiating crew to wear short-sleeved shirts, in order to differentiate from the media crew, I couldn’t help myself:

“So you think sleeves are the only way they’re going to know?”

But thanks to Shaw and Austin’s crew, we managed to get through the game without egregious errors — though there was a big miss; more on that in a moment. With the help of veteran back judge Jimmy Russell, I didn’t botch anything super important. That’s not to say I didn’t miss anything. Most plays, it was several things — though not necessarily penalties.

Russell went over the basic responsibilities of a back judge, including but not limited to:

► Positioning on the field: Starting 27 yards beyond the line of scrimmage, always remaining deeper than the play, understanding and maintaining angles for vision.

► Pre-snap keys: All officials are responsible for the correct down. The back judge is responsible for the play clock, as well as counting the defensive players, so Russell’s mental routine before a play begins goes something like this: Down. Play clock. Count (“3-6-9-11”). If it’s 11, signal thumbs up to the field and side judges, looking for their confirmation. Play clock again. Count again.

► It’s more complicated than this, but the back judge watches the action between receivers and defensive players on deeper pass routes to the middle, beginning with the inside receivers.

There are also specific responsibilities on punts and kickoffs and extra points and field goals and, well, even after spending an extra hour working with Russell after the formal session was over, my head was spinning. But I had a better grip on something Russell had said a little earlier:

“You don’t even know yet what you don’t know,” he’d said, adding: “Some of it’s so fast, it’ll be overwhelming. Just stick with what you know.”

I knew I didn’t know much. Things slowed some during the game, just as Russell had predicted. But even the successes were qualified. That long pass for a touchdown? I’d gotten to the goal line in time, ahead of the play. But I’d been unable to stay there, carried by momentum into the end zone. And when I signaled touchdown, Russell told me moments later, I should have turned to follow Turner’s path — part of the official’s job is to watch what happens after a play is finished.

***

In a pregame meeting, South Carolina coach Will Muschamp told us, “We’re gonna go fast,” referring to the Gamecocks’ shift to an uptempo offense, “so I hope you’re in shape.” And he asked:

“When you put on that (official’s) jersey, did you all of the sudden get blurred vision and did your I.Q. drop 100 points?”

Funny, yeah — but that’s how it sometimes felt.

More from Muschamp, who’d told Shaw he was glad to have us participate, as long as we didn’t “screw up his game.” The day before, he’d told me, “I can’t wait to rip some ref (butt).” And when I asked for any advice, he’d added:

“No pass interference in this game.” I laughed. And then he said, “No, I mean it.” But he was laughing, too.

Later, as I watched a receiver and cornerback battle near the end zone on an incomplete pass I considered but did not throw a flag. Russell had said to look for a “train wreck, not a fender-bender,” and this seemed more like the latter. There was some jostling by both players, but the flag stayed tucked. And a few moments later, Russell agreed. SEC officials, he said, want to let receivers and defensive backs play, unless the contact provides a clear advantage.

“You’ve seen the level of contact now,” Russell said. “Keep that in your mind and use it as a baseline for the next one.”

Another piece of advice: Don’t get in a hurry to throw the flag.

“If you wait one second,” Russell said, “the play will show itself.”

And Shaw said when he hears announcers say something about a flag being thrown late, he’s thinking, “Good job.”

“I want you to be patient with it,” he added.

***

The ultimate goal, of course, is to get it right, which is why afterward, we convened in the replay booth in the press box, where SEC observer and instant replay communicator Larry Rose, a retired NFL and college official, critiqued some of what we’d gotten wrong. It was a cut-down version (15 minutes, not 90) of the grading session actual officials go through each week. By Rose’s standards, it was gentle and not nearly as detailed. For our sakes, those were both very good things.

“This is just the first half,” he said. “And I left a lot of stuff off.”

Even so, Rose had a legal pad filled with bullet points and the corresponding plays were cued up on the monitor, ready to show our mistakes in HD.

There was Play No. 28, a fumble on a punt return — it wasn’t a muff; the receiver was off and running and then lost the football. Muschamp, exercising his coaching prerogative in a spring game, whistled the play dead as the ball hit the ground. But Rose stopped the video.

“The vision of the deep officials is really important,” he said. “Something can go wrong in a hurry.”

He was talking to me. I’d started in the right position, 5 yards behind the punt returner and 5 yards wide, but during the return I’d gotten reeled in, too close to the action.

“You’ve got the goal line (assignment),” Rose said — and then the video unspooled, showing a player scooping up the loose ball and racing right past me with the football, headed for the end zone, stopping only because of the coach’s premature whistle.

“You can appreciate how fast it goes,” he said.

And Play No. 38, when a defensive player hadn’t gotten off the field in time, and we missed 12 men on the field. Thankfully, the offense scored on the play, but it was a bad mistake.

“If the guy doesn’t score, that’s third-and-3,” Rose said. “Now (with the penalty) it’s first-and-goal. That’s a big difference.”

And then there was Play 50.

“This is a good one,” Rose said, and by “good” he meant bad. “This could be the play of the day, right here. This is classic why there’s replay.”

The video showed quarterback Dakereon Joyner scrambling away from pressure, diving for the end zone and reaching the ball forward for the pylon. He was called out of bounds at the 1.

Later a South Carolina fan tweeted at several of us: “Joyner scored. Ball hit the pylon. Horrible call. No replay? Don’t quit your day jobs.”

***

Of course, here’s the thing: The SEC’s real officials haven’t given up their day jobs, either. But their part-time pursuit is a full-time passion. Russell spends between 15-20 hours each week during the season reviewing the previous game and preparing for the next one, including at least 20 minutes every day studying the rule book (“If you’re in the rule book every day,” he said, “your judgment is sound and the gray areas get very narrow”).

Russell, like so many of his peers, started working high-school games and worked his way up through several levels of college football. He does it for the crew camaraderie and the constant challenge, with a perfect, clean game probably always tantalizingly out of reach — but still the goal.

On Friday night, Shaw asked Austin’s crew to raise a hand if they’d never missed a call. None did. And most, like Russell, had a story about a big one. Usually, it was a combination of tiny errors — out of position, poor mechanics a missed key, an unexpected event, and so on — that combined and compounded to create an error they’ll never live down.

“The fans forget in a year or two,” Shaw said, though that might be underestimation. “But it eats at you for life.”

**

That fan on Twitter was right. We’d missed the call on Joyner’s dive for the pylon. But the fan was also wrong. It wasn’t a touchdown.

Joyner was not out of bounds at the 1. The ball hit the pylon — just after he lost it. The fumble should have been a touchback and a turnover; instead, the offense scored on the next play.

“That just shows you the importance of being in position,” Rose said. “And No. 2, making sure you see the ball and how it goes. Replay’s gonna come in and fix this. But it’s certainly not out at the 1-yard line. … We would spend a lot of time on that on Saturday (after a game). We might go through that five or six times.”

Thankfully, we didn’t. Rose highlighted some iffy holding calls and a couple of plays that might or might not have been pass interference, and then let us off easy.

“All in all, y’all did great,” he told us. “You caught onto it pretty quickly. You got moving. Things were good. The only thing I can say is, it’s a different perspective. Don’t be so hard on (officials) when you want to be.

“You can say, ‘You know, I’ve been there.’ ”

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