CFL OFFICIAL ‘STAR-STRUCK’ BY NFL
Bring NFL and CFL officials together, and you know what the Americans want to ask about.
“The rouge,” said Dave Hawkshaw, one of three CFL officials who worked NFL pre-season games over the weekend.
Yes, Canadian football’s famous one-point touchback.
Hawkshaw served as field judge in Saturday’s Houston at New Orleans game at NRG Stadium. In a phone interview from Kamloops, B.C., the 43-year-old firefighter-by-day talked about his experiences south of the border, as this year’s four-month NFL/ CFL officiating development program has now concluded.
Dave Foxcroft of Hamilton, Ont., worked as field judge in Saturday’s Broncos-49ers game at San Francisco, while Justin McInnes of Edmonton worked as line judge in Friday’s Raiders-Packers game in Green Bay.
Hawkshaw was a busy man on Saturday. He said he threw five flags and judged a few close calls, one of which angered Saints head coach Sean Payton, another of which was a fumble. Replay proved both calls correct.
Regarding the fumble, Hawkshaw said, “We’re trained that if you don’t see the knee down, you hold your whistle. I saw the ball loose. It was definitely fumbled, because they review all turnovers, and video showed the guy’s knee was about an inch off the ground. That was a great call.”
Later, Payton was irked that Hawkshaw flagged one of his receivers for having stepped out of bounds but failing to get both feet back in bounds before catching the ball.
“He had some choice words for me and the crew,” Hawkshaw said of Payton. “He wasn’t pleased with the call. But then I watched it on replay and slowed it right down. It was the correct call. I was super excited about that.”
As part of the novel partnership program, Hawkshaw and his two Canadian comrades attended a one-day NFL meeting in Newark in May, a followup meeting along with a few dozen aspiring NFL officials, two days of the Chicago Bears’ mini-camp in June, the NFL’s principal preparatory weekend clinic for all officials in Dallas in early July, and then he worked three days of Tennessee Titans’ training camp.
On top of that, there were rules tests, video tests and crew tests.
“I was a little star-struck at first,” Hawkshaw said. “But all the officials down there were just very welcoming and great to work with. From lending me their notes, to answering all questions. Everybody’s just been fantastic.”
When NFL officials would find out where he worked, they’d pepper him with questions.
“Some guys would say, ‘The CFL? God, I love that game. They were intrigued, wanting to talk about the rouge and stuff,” Hawkshaw said. “Some think the CFL is kind of like Arena Football on steroids, with all the motion. They’d asked, ‘How can you call that?’ ”
Glen Johnson, the CFL’s senior vice-president of football and czar of officiating, said he planned to talk to his NFL counterpart, senior VP of officiating Dean Blandino, on Tuesday to begin assessing how the program went. Will it continue? “We’ll jointly re-evaluate it at the end of the season — see if the NFL got value out of it, and if we got value out of it, and maybe leave it, change it ... don’t know,” Johnson said.