Pandemic makes tough job even tougher for officials
The TCU-Texas game needed three tries at the opening kickoff to get it right and the officials’ misadventures continued right up to the final play.
Kentucky coach Mark Stoops was so incensed about the officiating in an overtime loss to Mississippi that he chased the crew as it left the field.
What appeared to be a missed defensive holding call on Iowa State’s gameturning interception late in the Cyclones’ upset of Oklahoma left Sooners fans screaming at their TVs.
“You can tell the season is real now because people are starting to talk about officiating,” national coordinator of officials Steve Shaw said. “That’s certainly not new, whether there’s a pandemic or not.”
Sloppy play has been common during the first few weeks of the season, much of it attributed to the lack of spring practice and disrupted preseason work. It also meant officials couldn’t visit campuses and hone their craft in live scrimmages, though Shaw said training videos and presentations were well received and helped offset some of the lost opportunities.
Chemistry among the officials also has been an issue. Conference supervisors, to mitigate a risk point for possible coronavirus infections, have tried to assign officials to games within driving distance in an effort to reduce air travel.
The scheduling strategy has meant eight-person crews that generally stay intact an entire season, and often longer, have been broken up. Instead, officials work a game and then go their separate ways to work with another group the next week.
Instead of building camaraderie eating meals together and meeting in a hotel conference room to review mechanics, rules and video, officials are traveling alone and using videoconferencing to prepare for the next day’s game.
John McDaid, a longtime referee before being named SEC coordinator of officials this year, said sacrificing continuity can have a negative effect. He also noted not all positions are interchangeable among football officials as they are in other sports.
“We’re all eight links and we all need to work together to be the strongest chain we can be,” McDaid said. “For familiarity with each other, not just from a personal level but also in a professional level, how you work the position is pretty important. That’s why I believe staying together as a crew in football is a unique desire.”
In the Southeastern Conference, which has been playing for two weeks, McDaid was able to keep five of the seven crews for the Sept. 26 games mostly intact last week but an Associated Press review of Big 12 and Atlantic Coast Conference game reports showed a significant amount of shuffling of officials from week to week.
Dennis Hennigan, the ACC coordinator of officials, said keeping crews together is ideal, but many of the officials know each other from previous seasons.