I’m always learning.
My whole life I have tried and tried to figure out football. Since high school! This week I learned a lot more about this subject than I could never make sense of in my head. I know I’m setting the female gender back a few decades by even admitting I’m not a sports fan but its Rotary right? Honesty counts!
We had a great speaker this week, Jim Jankowski, who talked about College Football Officiating. He has worked in the Big 8, Big 12 and Big 10. Big 8 and Big 10 are his favorites as they are more family oriented. “Little kids in big bodies” is the way he described many of the players…what a sweet reference. His role in the booth pertains to instant replay and the game clock, and yard line down (which means nothing to me.) He told us how receiving film of the game used to take several days to come out for review and now with instant replay it happens during and immediately following the game. Technology! Jim told us that sometimes referees are more hesitant to make the calls because the instant replay might show a missed or wrong call.
If the officiator has actually played on a team they are unable to work those games. Also, they have to get permission before they go to any venues that might afford gambling opportunities. An interesting fact we learned is that there is an alternate on the field with a headset that stalls the game while the instant replays are being reviewed, most folks are unaware this is happening. It was fun to learn some of the secrets of the game. Here is your code phrase of the week, we need sergeant at arms help every meeting, who’s stepping up?
Jim also shared that sometimes the players run into the officiators during the game! Who knew? He mentioned that it was important for the officiator to be able to ignore the attitudes of the players…important to have tough skin. Some more interesting facts is there are two female referees in the Big 10 and that Commercial TV has changed the face of the game. Mostly because games are slowed down to accommodate commercials, although efforts are made to keep the game flowing. Our thanks to Jim for giving us this presentation and helping me learn a little bit more about football -Camille |
